Movie Review: Uncut Gems

Uncut Gems (2019) 

Directed by The Safdie Brothers

Written by The Safdie Brothers

Starring Adam Sandler, Kevin Garnett, Eric Bogosian

Release Date December 13th, 2019 

Published December 10th, 2019 

I am not a fan of the work of Adam Sandler. I find Sandler’s brand of lowbrow comedy to be like the proverbial nails on a chalkboard. Sandler has made movies so terrible that they still haunt my nightmares, Jack and Jill. This is all to say that when I hear Adam Sandler is starring in a movie, I assume the worst and look to avoid it, something that Sandler’s deal with Netflix has made easier for me as a critic of theatrical features. 

So it was with great trepidation that I approached Adam Sandler’s new movie, Uncut Gems. On the one hand, reviews for this drama from indie darling filmmakers, Josh and Benny Safdie, have been phenomenal. On the other hand… it’s Sandler, I have a right to my cynicism. What a surprise then to find that not only is Sandler not blindingly terrible in Uncut Gems, he may be downright Oscar-worthy. 

Uncut Gems stars Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner, a high end, New York City jewelry store owner whose life moves at a rapid and relentless clip. Howard is in debt to everyone because he can’t resist getting to the next big score. This could be a piece of high end jewelry or a big bet parlay on a sporting event. Whatever that next big thing is, Howard is drawn to it like a moth to a flame, only even more flammable. 

Howard’s latest big score is an uncut gem that he’s acquired through nefarious means. The gem was stolen from a diamond mine in Ethiopia where the diamond trade is a literally cutthroat business at times. Somehow, Howard convinced some locals to give him the uncut gem for an insanely low price and smuggle it to him at the penalty of their own death had they been caught. For them, they stand to gain a couple thousand dollars. Howard, however, believes the gem is worth more than a million. 

Howard being Howard however, he can’t resist risking his big new investment. First he decides to show it off when NBA star Kevin Garnett drops by his store. Then, out of ungodly hubris, he let’s KG take the gem for a night while Howard holds and subsequently, secretly pawn’s KG’s NBA championship ring. Howard takes that money and bets it on a parlay, a three prong wager on KG’s scoring, rebounding and the Celtics winning. 

That’s just the furious first act of Uncut Gems which roils and simmers and boils with plot developments, rarely slowing to catch a breath. 

After years of selling short his own talent, Adam Sandler has found the role of a lifetime in Howard. The character is a perfect distillation of the best of Sandler’s manic, angry, energy. Usually, Sandler is as boring and listless as his moves are tasteless and unfunny. Here, however, with a pair of visionary directors at the helm and a juicy character to play, Sandler is violently alive with energy and excitement shooting from his eyeballs. 

This is a tour de force performance made all the more impressive for lack of strong supporting performances. That’s not a knock on Lakeith Stanfield, Idina Menzel or Julia Fox who make up the top supporting players in this story, they appear to be intentionally underwritten and portrayed specifically to act as bounders for Sandler’s pinball performance. Arguably, the most impactful supporting performance from basketball legend Kevin Garnett whose growing obsession with the gem nearly matches Howard’s. 

Uncut Gems was written and directed by the Safdie Brothers, Josh and Benny. The Safdies became the darlings of the indie film world with their 2017 crime drama Good Time. I found Good Time to be visually dynamic but too repetitive. But, like Uncut Gems, that Good Time hummed with life and energy. The Safdie’s are really great at building tension in their narrative and not allowing that tension to ease until the very end. 

In Uncut Gems that is an absolutely perfect approach. The ending of Uncut Gems is breathtakingly on point. There is no other way for this movie to end and the ending is a gut shot. I won’t spoil anything of the ending, just give yourself over to the high intensity of Sandler and the low, simmering, violent rage of his nemesis, Arno, magnificently played in small bursts by Eric Bogosian, and you too will find this ending to be one of incredibly powerful catharsis. To say more is to say too much.  

Uncut Gems is extraordinary. 

Movie Review: Angel Has Fallen

Angel Has Fallen (2019)

Directed by Ric Roman Waugh

Written by Robert Mark Kamen, Matt Cook, Ric Roman Waugh

Starring Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Piper Perabo 

Release Date August 23rd, 2019 

Published August 22nd, 2019 

Angel Has Fallen stars Gerard Butler as Secret Service Agent, Mike Banning. Banning was the protagonist of Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen in recent years. In Angel Has Fallen we find a battered and bruised Banning suffering from post-concussion syndrome and relying on opioid to get by. Mike is hiding his condition from his wife (Piper Perabo) and even from his employer, President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman). 

The only person aware of Mike’s issues is his closest friend, heretofore never mentioned in either previous movie despite also being a military and security expert whose tactical abilities might have come in handy in Mike’s previous adventures, Wade Jennings (Danny Huston). The two come together for beers and reminiscing and Mike confides that he is having some issues even as career-wise things are going well. Mike is soon to be named as the new head of the Secret Service. 

The plot kicks in when Mike is guarding the President while he fishes on a private lake in Virginia. As Mike is taking a break to get more of his pills, the President’s security team is attacked by drones. All of the security team is killed except for Mike who also manages to rescue the President who is left in a coma from the attack. Mike is knocked unconscious and when he wakes up the next day he finds himself in handcuffs. 

It seems that Mike’s fingerprints and DNA were found inside of a van from which the drones were launched. There is also the matter of some $10 million dollars traced back to Russia that has been found in an offshore account in Mike’s name. The FBI, led by Agent Thompson (Jada Pinkett Smith), is convinced that Mike is guilty of having orchestrated the attack on the President. He’s arrested and things get even weirder when Mike is busted out by a group of military trained mercenaries. 

From there, Mike will escape the mercenaries and go on the run alone until he reaches the survivalist compound of his long absent father, Clay Banning (Nick Nolte), who gives him a place to hole up and regroup while the entire world searches for him. Mike has to figure out who set him up and how to prove to the good guys that he’s innocent so he can go after the bad guys and take them down while making sure the President is safe. 

Where to begin with this idiotic plot. Angel Has Fallen is a singularly stupid movie. Most modern action movies are kind of brain dead but Angel Has Fallen takes brain death to a place of oxygen starved severity. Where movies like Fast and Furious Presents Hobbs and Shaw are dumb loud action movies that also happen to be fun, Angel Has Fallen is dumb, loud and unwatchably insipid. Angel Has Fallen lacks the charm to be fun and dumb. Instead, we are simply inundated with one dumb action scene after another in service of a deeply idiotic plot. 

The dopey script, in order to get to the Mike Banning as The Fugitive plot they pre-ordained, has every other character in the movie turn into a complete moron. I was reminded of how the original movie, Olympus Has Fallen, in order to set out Mike as the greatest badass in history, turned the rest of the American military into fumbling doofuses who couldn’t shoot straight, a plot so offensive I was shocked that the movie found an audience among those who claim to support our military. 

In Angel Has Fallen, it’s US intelligence that gets struck dumb in order to put over Mike as the one smart person in a sea of idiots. Poor Jada Pinkett Smith is forced to try and make this uniquely moronic plot work but in order to do that, she’s forced to act as the single most fog brained FBI agent in movie history. Only the most obvious clues are the ones that matter to her according to the plot and her single-minded, unquestioning, performance renders her witless. 

That shouldn’t be too surprising as the movie has an equal amount of contempt for the audience. The plot of Angel Has Fallen could not be more predictable if they had handed out laminated copies of the script, color coded with notes about which characters are good and trustworthy and which ones are duplicitous baddies. If you can’t identify the two big villains of this movie within the first 5 minutes of the movie starting, you might want to check into a hospital to have your faculties checked. 

Then, there is Gerard Butler, arguably the most charm-free and talentless of our modern action heroes. While some might seek to compare Butler to the Stallone’s and Schwarzenegger’s of the 80’s action genre, a better correlative would be Steven Seagal. Both are lunkheads with an arrogance that far surpasses their talent and a doughy, gormless quality to their appearance that betrays their over abundance of confidence.

Butler’s Banning, like every one of the characters Seagal played, is invincible, indestructible and due to some unspoken supernatural force, always capable of outsmarting people clearly smarter than they are. Butler, at the very least, hasn't tried to bring the ponytail back and is actually capable of running where Seagal's heroes were more stationary than your average couch, but the two share far more in common with their utter lack of genuine talent. 

The screenwriters of the Fallen movies sacrifice the dignity and self-respect of every other character in these movies in their vain attempt to convince us that the sweaty, grunting, lummox that is Mike Banning, is the most cunning and crafty character on screen. It’s a failing effort from the start and that becomes an almost poignant source of campy laughs as these movies where on.

I genuinely began to feel sorry for Angel Has Fallen screenwriter Mark Robert Kamen as this movie wore on. Kamen's blood, sweat and tears must be all over these pages as he violates basic screenwriting ethics and general good taste just to try to make this one character remotely believable in the hands of this lunk headed star. 

Angel Has Fallen is thus far the worst movie of 2019.

Movie Review: Aladdin (2019)

Aladdin (2019) 

Directed by Guy Ritchie 

Written by John August, Guy Ritchie

Starring Will Smith, Mena Massoud, Nasim Pedrad 

Release Date May 24th, 2019

Published May 23rd, 2019

As Disney continues their mercenary, commerce over art, traipse through bringing their animated classics to CGI life, we find ourselves at Aladdin, the movie Robin Williams made famous, now without Robin Williams. Now, in fairness, Will Smith is taking on the role of the Genie that Williams made into an animated classic and Will Smith is a movie God, but he’s still not Robin Williams in terms of his style of performance. 

What set Aladdin the cartoon apart was the manic, over the top, non-stop energy of Robin Williams. Williams’ remarkably fast paced riffing and pop references may appear a tad dated, Jack Nicholson impressions aren’t exactly in vogue anymore, his manic energy and lovable, charming innocence, made that character and that movie more than the sum of its rather average parts. For a moment, imagine Aladdin without Robin Williams? Sappy loves and bland romance with no flavor and a great deal less fun. 

Will Smith is not that kind of performer. Smith is charming and charismatic and he can be goofy when it’s called for, but the Will Smith brand hasn’t been goofy and charming in some time now. When Will Smith grew up and left behind childish performances as in the original Men in Black and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, he developed a more serious and stolid persona. He didn’t become completely un-fun but movies like 7 Pounds, I Am Legend and Suicide Squad are not exactly laugh riots. Not since Men in Black 3 in 2012 has Will sought to make audiences laugh and he hasn’t played straight comedy since 2005’s Hitch. 

That raises the question: Is Will Smith funny in Aladdin? Yes and no. Yes, in that in a couple scenes in the strong second act of Aladdin, Will Smith gets a couple of chuckles. Is Smith the laugh riot that Williams was in the animated Aladdin? Not by a long shot. Smith’s introductory gags, immediately following meeting Aladdin and introducing himself as The Genie, are a little cringe-inducing, rather of the Dad Joke variety. He’s certainly amused with himself but we in the audience are, for the most part, politely smiling while waiting for something funny. 

It occurs to me now that I am 5 paragraphs into a review of Aladdin and all I have done is talk about Will Smith and the faltering comparison to Robin Williams. The reason for that is, if Will Smith is, as I mentioned earlier, the best thing about Aladdin, you can imagine, there isn’t much more to say about the rest of Aladdin. Weak songs, a bland leading man performance from Mena Massoud and some odd direction from Guy Ritchie are all that’s left and I don’t dislike Aladdin enough to linger on those flaws. 

If you are somehow not aware of the plot of Aladdin, the story goes that Aladdin is plucked off the streets by the evil Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) to enter the cave of wonders. Because Aladdin has a true heart he is allowed to enter, along with his monkey, Abu, and he retrieves the lamp which he proceeds to rub. Out of the lamp pops Genie Will Smith, wishes are made, the heart of Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) is won and all is well with the world. 

The plot is the same as the animated feature only flattened out to a too long 2 hours and 6 minutes. The extra time is dedicated to extra musical numbers, including one brand new original song from composer Alan Menken, Speechless, sung by Naomi Scott. Speechless is a fine song in and of itself, a power pop ballad about female empowerment. That said, the placement within the film is wonky and off-putting. The song is shoehorned into a fantasy sequence with all the finesse of a sledgehammer. 

I’m being unkind again, let’s talk positives. Once Aladdin makes his wish to be a Prince and becomes Prince Ali of Ababwa, the movie manages to find a new gear. Smith switches from the buff, big, blue genie to his more familiar persona and digs into a belter of a reimagining of the centerpiece tune “Prince Ali.” Smith isn’t much of a singer but the song is smartly paced and it slows to give Smith the chance to rap rather than being forced to try and sing. 

From there is a charming party scene where even Mena Massoud’s Aladdin finds a little life, thanks to a little bit of Bollywood musical magic, and for a time you think that Aladdin might just work out. That momentum dies as we turn to the third act and the films flavorless villain, Jafar, takes far too much of the center stage. Marwan Kenzari isn’t bad but this is not a great, memorable villain. The plot pushes hard but Jafar is more wet blanket than super-villain. His defeat isn’t nearly as satisfying here as it was in the animated feature which is surprising considering they are virtually identical. 

I’m coming off like I really dislike Aladdin and I don’t. It’s… it’s… fine. It’s okay. I don’t mind Aladdin. I am resigned to the notion that Disney is going to, without a care for art or originality, continue to pump out live action rehashes of their animated classics because well known I.P is more important than art. The marketing department at Disney may as well start getting producer credits these days as they seem to be the ones making the decisions. 

But that is the cry of the artist in a medium of capitalists. It’s not fair to condemn a business for attempting to make money. That said, I don’t have to enjoy it or endorse it, I just have to tolerate it and hope for the best. The best, in the case of Aladdin, is a genuinely charming second act and a not terrible performance by Will Smith. It’s not much but we have to find our pleasures where we can in the mercenary world of Disney remakes. 

Movie Review: Dora and the Lost City of Gold

Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019) 

Directed by James Bobin

Written by Nicholas Stoller, Matthew Robinson

Starring Eva Longoria, Eugenio Derbez

Release Date August 9th, 2019 

Published August 9th, 2019 

Dora and the Lost City of Gold is a strange movie. This adaptation of the famed cartoon series, Dora the Explorer, attempts to bridge the gap from the toddler-centric cartoon to a modern day adventure aimed at tweens and young teens. That this bridge turns out to be rather solid is quite a welcome surprise. Dora and the Lost City of Gold isn’t exactly a mind-blowing cinematic experience but it is modestly entertaining and inoffensively fun. 

Dora (Isabella Moner) grew up in the jungle with a monkey for a best friend and a backpack and a map as her toys. Fearless and curious, Dora from an early age explored every inch of jungle she could. Dora’s parents, Cole (Michael Pena) and Elena (Eva Longoria), are explorers who live to discover hidden places in the world. Distinctively however, Cole and Elena are explorers and not treasure hunters. 

Cole and Elena instill in Dora a deep respect for not disturbing the places they explore but experiencing them as they are. This is a rare attitude unfortunately, as most people in the business of being in the jungle, do so for profit and glory. Dora shares her parents’ love of history and learning and her curiosity drives her to take risks, risks that unfortunately lead mom and dad to worry for her safety.

Mom and Dad are on the verge of discovering the Lost City of Gold, the Incan legend about an unimaginable treasure. They are ready to go and explore this hidden treasure but when Dora nearly breaks herself in half trying to find one more clue for them, they decide that the trip is just too dangerous for her. Dora will have to go to America and stay with her aunt, uncle and her cousin, Diego (Jeff Wahlberg). 

Diego’s parents used to live and work and explore in the jungle just like Cole and Elena. This led to Dora and Diego growing up as best friends, going on imaginary adventures together with Boots The Monkey (voice of Dany Trejo), a talking Map and Dora’s animated backpack always filled with exactly the tools that they needed. That was 10 years ago however, when Diego’s parents moved to California. 

Today, Diego is as much a city kid as anyone at his High School. He has memories of his cousin Dora, but High School has made him anxious, cynical and self-involved, the antithesis of the bright, cheerful and eager to please Dora. The best friends reunion that Dora hoped for doesn’t go as planned, nor does her first days in High School where she’s picked on, mocked and struggles to fit in. This doesn’t deter Dora from being her cheerful self, but it is troubling for her. 

Then, the plot truly kicks in. Dora’s parents go missing during their search for the Lost City of Gold and Dora is kidnapped along with Diego, and two classmates, Randy (Nicholas Coombe) and Sammie (Madeleine Madden), during a school field trip. The kidnappers want Dora to lead them to her parents and the trail to the Lost City of Gold. When they arrive back in the jungle however, a friend of Dora’s parents, Alejandro (Eugenio Derbez) is there for the rescue. He along with Dora and the gang will have to find Dora’s parents before the kidnappers do in order to survive this adventure.

Dora and the Lost City of Gold was written by Nicholas Stoller of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Neighbors fame and it is quite a departure for him. His wheelhouse is clearly a raunchy comedy but, don’t forget, he was also producer on the most recent Muppet Movies, The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted so kids movies with an edge are not all that much of a stretch for Stoller. Not that there is much edge at all to Dora, but there is some experimentation. 

Dora and the Lost City of Gold was directed by James Bobin who worked with Stoller on Muppets Most Wanted. In that movie, Stoller and Bobin used irreverent references to classic movies to tell the story of The Muppets in a fashion that bridged the gap between the target kid audience and an audience of nostalgic adults. Here, they employ a similar style, if similar is the right word for the direct lifting of entire scenes from the Indiana Jones canon. 

The ending of Dora and the Lost City of Gold borders on being a shot for shot remake of the ending of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. It’s barely even heightened with the main difference being that the bad guy in Dora doesn’t die horrifically on screen. If you’re wondering why I haven’t issued a spoiler alert because I just talked about the ending, trust me when I say I haven’t spoiled anything. Dora and The Lost City of Gold is not a movie that gets its appeal from its plot.

So, did I enjoy Dora and the Lost City of Gold? Yes, for the most part. After I got over the fact that I was watching an adaptation of Dora the Explorer, I did legitimately find myself enjoying much of Lost City of Gold. Young Isabelle Moner is a fine young actress whose enthusiasm is rather infectious. She and the rest of the teenage cast are fun to watch, they appear to be having a great time making this movie and that feeling comes through the screen. 

That said, it’s not all great. For one thing, I would be very pleased to never see Eugenio Derbez on the big screen again. Derbez’s comic style is basically being as clueless and obnoxious as possible. It’s a style that is akin to fingernails on a chalkboard for me but I could see where kids might enjoy his clownish behavior. That’s the nicest thing I can say about Derbez, he’s a giant goof that children may laugh at because they don’t know any better. 

Derbez aside, it's rather improbable given its unique origin but, Dora and the Lost City of Gold is a movie I recommend. Dora is fun enough, it's exciting enough, it has just enough laughs and fourth wall breaking fun. I never would have expected it but I am actually recommending Dora and the Lost City of Gold. That's with the caveat that it is not for all audiences, this is a kids movie, but it is a solid, inoffensive, good natured kids movie that parents won't hate. 

Movie Review Stuber

Stuber (2019) 

Directed by Michael Dowse

Written by Tripper Clancy 

Starring Kumail Nanjiani, Dave Bautista

Release Date July 12th, 2019 

Published July 12th, 2019 

Sometimes the appeal of a movie has nothing to do with what the movie is about but how the movie is about its subject. Stuber is a good example of this phenomenon. Judging Stuber by its cover the first thing you notice is a terrible title, a pun on the main character’s name and his part time profession as an Uber driver, and a rather generic, mismatched buddy comedy with fish out of water characters. 

That judgemental, surface perception of Stuber is pretty on the nose about what the movie is but thankfully, in execution, there is something slightly more to Stuber. In executing the same old cliches of the past, Stuber director Michael Dowse has upcycled those cliches via his two terrific stars. Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista may be enacting the familiar tropes of mismatched buddies past but they are having so much fun doing it that they make those tropes feel fresh again. 

Stuber stars Kumail Nanjiani as Stu, a part time sporting goods store employee who moonlights as an Uber driver. Stu’s routine, mundane life is about to be upended by his latest rideshare customer, Vic (Dave Bautista). Vic is a police detective on the trail of the drug dealer who murdered his partner. On this particular day, Vic gets a tip from an informant that may lead to the killer but unfortunately, Vic has just gotten lasik surgery and cannot see to drive. 

Vic’s daughter, Nicole (Natalie Morales) happens to have just hooked her dad up with the Uber app, mostly so that she won’t have to haul him anywhere herself. Thus how Vic meets Stu and eventually takes him hostage and makes him his unlikely partner in a night filled with mayhem including gun fights, car chases and near death experiences. Along the way, naturally, Stu and Vic will become friends and that is the true heart of Stuber. 

The first act of Stuber plays on the cliches of the masculine, man’s man Vic and the consummate metrosexual millennial Stu, butting heads over their view of what makes a man a man. For Vic, manhood is having been left in a forest overnight by his father as a pre-teen child with only a pen knife to get him through the night. Stu clocks that story as a form of abuse while rejecting the notion that manhood has anything to do with physical trials. 

So yeah, the story of Stuber isn’t particularly special. Thankfully, Kumail Nanjiani is special for his dynamic with the burly and brusque Bautista. These two are clearly having a great deal of fun butting heads with each other and riffing great jokes off of what are otherwise well worn cliches of the action comedy genre. I could sit here for a while and describe the plot failings of Stuber but I was too busy laughing to catalog the film’s issues. 

The jokes come fast and furious in Stuber with Nanjiani throwing everything at the wall and director Michael Dowse keeping up a breakneck comic pace that covers for the few jokes that don’t land. The jokes aren’t memorable or brilliant, more often I found myself laughing despite myself. The speed and timing of Stuber matter as much or more than the actual content of the joke. Kumail Nanjiani is one of the funniest people on the planet right now and Stuber takes full advantage of his remarkable talent, 

Stuber isn’t going to win any awards or be remembered long after it is in theaters but while you are there, it’s pretty entertaining. The makers of Stuber don’t try too hard to make the film memorable, they just want to make you laugh and for the most part, they succeed. Stuber is really funny even as the plot is so predictable that you could set your watch by the cliches on hand. Kumail Nanjiani is perhaps my favorite comic presence in movies today. Even his Men in Black International alien was entertaining and that movie was a steaming pile. 

I do hope that Kumail dedicates himself to better material in the future but for now, I am glad to see him having fun in a big, silly, action movie. Not every movie has to be a transcendent work of humanity, humor and art like Kumail’s The Big Sick. Sometimes, a movie is just a big piece of cake, a rich, not so good for you, sugary mess that tastes delicious, even as it isn’t exactly good for you. Stuber is a piece of cake.

Movie Review: Dumbo

Dumbo (2019)  

Directed by Tim Burton 

Written by Ehren Kruger

Starring Danny Devito, Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Eva Green 

Release Date March 29th, 2019

Published March 28th, 2019 

Dumbo is a good movie that I feel good about recommending. The film is solid, well-made, sturdy, family entertainment with just enough laughs and good nature to make it work. I find myself in an odd position with this statement however as I have received some backlash from my radio review of Dumbo. On the radio, I said that I liked the movie, that it was ‘good enough.’ This led to more than one listener asking me why I ‘don't like’ Dumbo. I’m here to tell you, I do like Dumbo despite its many notable flaws. 

Dumbo is the story of a little elephant born with giant ears who learns to fly with the help of a pair of ingenious siblings. This is a live action take on the 1941 Disney animated movie that, at 65 minutes in length, barely qualified to be called a ‘feature’ film. This version, crafted by daft auteur Tim Burton, is more than two hours long and feels about that long. Gone are the talking animals in favor of some well crafted human characters. Best of all, no problematic bird characters. 

Newcomers, Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins star in Dumbo as sister and brother, Milly and Joe Farrier. Milly and Joe recently lost their mother but are lucky to have their war hero father, Holt (Colin Farrell), back home from World War 1 and ready to resume life on the road with the Medici Brothers Circus, under the leadership of Max Medici (Danny Devito). Unfortunately, Holt lost an arm in the war and without his beloved wife, he’s lost his once vaunted horse show. 

With nothing else available with the circus, Max puts Holt in charge of the elephants and specifically, a new baby elephant that Max hopes will be the savior of the circus. Then, Max meets Dumbo and sees his giant, ungainly ears. Max doesn’t believe that Dumbo will be an asset to the circus and when Dumbo is mistreated by the circus roustabouts, Dumbo’s mom, Jumbo leaps to her son’s defense and a man is killed. 

Jumbo is deemed a dangerous animal and is sold to another circus. With his mother gone, Dumbo is left in the care of Milly and Joe who care for him and teach him a game. They begin blowing a feather back and forth only to find that when Dumbo sniffs the feather and sneezes, he flies up in the air with his giant ears as wings. Eventually, with prodding from Milly and Joe, Dumbo learns to fly and becomes the star of the circus. 

Naturally, the flying baby elephant gains nationwide notoriety and the attention of circus entrepreneur, V.A Vandervere (Michael Keaton). Vandervere makes Max his partner in a massive money venture that lands the entire Medici Circus in the big city where Dumbo will star alongside Collete (Eva Green), an acrobat in a brand new, outlandish show. Vandervere means to exploit Dumbo for all he’s worth, even if that means making sure Dumbo never sees his mom again. 

There are no spoilers in that description as there are more characters and more action to what I have described in this review in Dumbo. Tim Burton does well to craft a large, entertaining and colorful canvas. Despite that, this is not typical of Tim Burton’s style. There is an impersonal, mercenary quality to Dumbo that is unusual for Burton’s work. Burton directs like a director for hire rather than a director with a dedicated vision for telling this story. 

Dumbo has a perfunctory quality that makes the film far more average and standard than truly great entertainment. There is nothing really, terribly wrong with Dumbo, but it is not transcendent or memorable in the way Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella was or even as elaborate and fantastical as the live action Beauty and the Beast. The scale feels smaller and the story lacks the kind of stakes that those films established. 

The biggest issues with Dumbo are more taste issues. For instance, I didn’t care for the way that Tim Burton directed Michael Keaton to be Johnny Depp-lite. Keaton’s Vandervere has all of the quirk and cadence of Johnny Depp at his most affected. The same could be said of Eva Green who is directed by Burton to play Colette exactly as Burton’s wife Helena Bonham Carter would have played her, with the same lilting affectations. 

This, aside from a few scenes reminiscent of the lovely watercolors of Alice in Wonderland, though far better than those dreadful movies, are the only Tim Burton signatures in Dumbo. As I mentioned earlier, he doesn’t appear invested in this story or this production in the way he has in his previous movies, specifically the movies he wrote and directed on his own. Burton appears comfortable having delivered screenwriter Ehren Kruger’s simplistic story to the screen with little innovation. 

Nevertheless, Dumbo is not a bad movie. Dumbo the character is quite engaging for a CGI creation and the flying scenes capture the wonder of the circus and a world where magic still seemed possible. The period setting has a dreamlike, magical quality and though the milquetoast heroes don’t standout all that much, they do enough to be rousing and charming enough to keep audiences engaged and in a pleasant mood. 

Dumbo is a good movie. It’s at the lower end of the modern Disney live action adaptations, above Alice in Wonderland and The Jungle Book but well below the transcendent masterpiece that was Cinderella and the lovely Beauty and the Beast. It will be interesting to rank Dumbo when Aladdin and The Lion King finally arrive in theaters this summer and next summer respectively. For now though, I do recommend taking the family to see Dumbo. 

Movie Review Replicas

Replicas (2019) 

Directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff 

Written by Chad St. John

Starring Keanu Reeves, Thomas Middleditch, Alice Eve, John Ortiz

Release Date January 11th, 2019

Published January 11th, 2019

Replicas isn’t as bad as I assumed it would be. Instead, Replicas are just bad in a more bland and general fashion. Where I have spent the last couple of days praising Keanu Reeves’ blank slate approach to being an action hero, here that blankness is more dead eyed and bored. Reeves isn’t holding back to give the audience an avatar, he’s checked out in the way that big time actors can tend to check out when they are just collecting a paycheck.

In Replicas, Keanu Reeves stars as Bill, a big shot scientist attempting to copy a human mind into a computer. We watch as a dead body arrives having only died hours before. This dead man volunteered to have his brain mapped and attempted to be copied and put into a robot. Unfortunately, the man’s mind rejects the robot body, even going so far as to try and punch its own mind out.

With this failure it appears that Bill might lose his job and the company itself may go out of business according to Bill’s boss, Jones (John Ortiz). Meanwhile, Bill is leaving on vacation that same day. Bill’s family are going to take out a boat owned by Bill’s co-worker Ed (Thomas Middleditch) but unfortunately, on the way to the boat, Bill and his family are in a car wreck that kills Bill’s wife (Alice Eve) and their three children.

Devastated in the immediate aftermath of the accident, Bill doesn’t contact the authorities. Instead, he calls Ed and has him bring his brain mapping equipment. Bill then sets about copying the minds of his wife and children as he did the dead man in his experiment. You might assume from this that he is going to make robot copies of his family, given that is what has been introduced already but you would be wrong.

Turns out, Ed is an expert in cloning and Bill wants Ed to clone his dead family. The two then set about stealing 4 million dollars worth of company property and taking three cloning pods and various genetic materials to Bill’s home. They do this despite the security protocols the script setup prior to this scene. Ed tells Bill that in 17 days, if all goes well, he will have three members of his family back but it will be up to him to choose which three and whether he can give them the memories and personalities they once had.

Have you got all of that nonsense because the film is so convoluted you might need to take notes. And yet, the film is equally as empty headed as it is overcomplicated. Keanu Reeves could not possibly care less about this movie. Take for instance the car wreck aftermath scenes. Keanu reacts to the death of his family with the same level of concern one might have for being cut off in traffic, he appears aggravated with a touch of confusion.

Middleditch meanwhile has exactly zero chemistry with Reeves despite the two apparently being close friends, according to the script. Middleditch is a mess of tics and awkward attempts at humor and while it is similar to his work on HBO’s Silicon Valley it doesn’t fit the serious tone cultivated by director Jeffrey Nachmanoff, a television veteran whose only other feature was the similarly sedate and confused Traitor in 2008.

Nachmanoff also wrote the screenplay for the similarly overstuffed The Day After Tomorrow. Much like that film, Replicas is a jumble of competing ideas. We start with a robot and then leap over to cloning. The cloning is relatively meaningless as it only leads to a series of action movie confrontations and a chase scene. The clones wind up being a plot driver but there is little consequence to the clones as characters.

Alice Eve is completely wasted in the role of wife and clone wife. The young star who made a strong impression in Star Trek a few years ago has almost zero presence in Replicas. You might expect from this premise that the clones would have a sinister air, perhaps a Twilight Zone like consequence, but no, they’re just perfect copies of Bill’s family, minus his young daughter because he only had three pods.

The film tries to mine some depth from Bill erasing his youngest daughter from the clones’ memories but Keanu Reeves can’t be bothered to express any genuine angst over this development and thus we don’t care much either. Much like how he reacted to the death of his family, Reeves’ Bill appears mildly befuddled by the decision to erase his daughter. Then, with no build up or drama, he eventually just tells his wife she’s a clone and that he erased their daughter. What should have been an important moment plays like Bill admitting he was the one who ate the last of pudding pops.

Replicas are really dopey but, to be fair, I was expecting a trainwreck. The film’s trailer and marketing campaign made the film appear to be something akin to a Tommy Wiseau movie, minus the charm. Keanu Reeves is bored, Thomas Middleditch is irksome and Alice Eve is absent. Replicas are forgettably bad, just competent enough for it to slip your memory just as quickly as you leave the theater.

Movie Review Joker

Joker (2019) 

Directed by Tod Phillips

Written by Tod Phillips

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy

Release Date October 4th, 2019

Published October 3rd 2019

Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix as the sad, damaged, mama's boy Arthur Fleck, who will one day in the near future snap and become the deranged criminal mastermind known as Joker. When we meet Arthur however, he's working as a sign twirling clown and it appears the world has it out for him. Not only is Arthur robbed of his twirling sign, he winds up beaten silly by the thieves and then told that he needs to pay for the broken sign. 

At home, Arthur's mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), insists that he check the mail incessantly for a response from Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), her former employer whom she insists will come to their rescue and get them out of their impoverished hovel of an apartment. That letter never comes, while Thomas Wayne appears to be entering the political arena, running for Mayor of Gotham City and promising to rid the streets of the criminals and the trash. 

Arthur doesn't care much for politics, everyday life is a challenge enough for Arthur whose dreams of becoming a stand up comic are made poignant and tragic by his long term neurological issue. Arthur has a condition, likely developed from a head trauma, that causes him to laugh inappropriately and uncontrollably and rarely when called for. His condition renders his dream of becoming a stand up comedian darkly ironic and eventually humiliating. 

Arthur is obsessed with many things but one that stands out is the Murray Franklin Show. Murray Franklin (Robert DeNiro) is the Johnny Carson of Gotham City, a television lifer who uses Sinatra's That's Life as a catchphrase and calling card. The two cross paths in person when Murray begins showing a video of Arthur's failed stand up gig and poking fun at Arthur. At this point, Arthur has lost his job, has murdered three men on a subway car after they attempted to beat him to death, and has gone off the medications that keep his delusions in check. 

This is what Murray does not know when he decides to book Arthur on his talk show and let the kid show he's a good sport by taking Murray's jibes in stride and in person. This is the final set piece of Joker and by far the strongest and most shocking element of the movie. If the rest of Joker had the power and fierceness of this moment, which fuses Joaquin Phoenix's real life talk show persona with the spiraling terror of the Joker persona for an extra kick of discomforting energy. 

Unfortunately, it's all downhill from here. Joker is an empty exercise in nihilism and troll culture. As directed by Todd Phillips, Joker mocks the audience by being all things to all audiences while not having a meaning of its own. The film uses a structure involving an unreliable narrator and the device is so clumsy that by the end, the filmmakers can use that unreliable narrator as a gimmick to deflect any reading of the movie, rendering the whole an empty shell and robbing the power from Joaquin Phoenix's performance. 

If you want to see Joker as a call to violent uprising against the rich, you can read it that way. If you want to see Joker as a critique of what is lacking in American healthcare, you can read it that way. If you want to read Joker as a critique of the policies of the Trump administration or as the ballad of the incel community or the most savage take-down of the policies of Elizabeth Warren, you can probably find all of that in Joker as well because the movie has no meaning of its own. 

I get that perhaps the movie intends to pose Joker as a mirror held up to society to reflect whatever society wants to see but I can't see what is intended to be entertaining or even interesting about such a taunting and trolling of the audience. Most people probably won't mind because the movie, and especially Joaquin Phoenix, looks cool while all that is going on, but the cool factor wore out pretty quickly for me once the cop out of an ending arrived and the unreliable narrator wiped most of the movie away in one fell swoop. 

I don't hate Joker, much like another nihilistic and childish swipe at those who choose to believe in things, Team America World Police, I just don't care. I find such intellectual dishonesty and trolling exhausting and thus I find Joker and the discourse surrounding it wearying. I no longer care. I suffered this movie and its arrogant, aggrandized taunting and I am glad its over.

Movie Review: Colette

Colette (2019) 

Directed by Wash Westmoreland 

Written by Wash Westmoreland, Richard Glazier, Rebecca Lenkiewicz 

Starring Keira Knightley, Dominic West, Eleanor Tomlinson, Denise Gough

Release Date January 11th, 2019

Published January 12th, 2019 

Colette is a sexy, smart and informative story about a real life figure who deserves a proper remembrance. Sidonie Gabrielle Colette was incredible, a writer, an actress, a pure iconoclast in a time when iconoclasts were some of the most brave people on the planet. Those willing to stand up and be different faced jail, poverty, even death in Colette’s day, even in the supposedly freewheeling Paris of the 19th and early 20th century. 

Keira Knightley portrays Colette as a young woman who had the luck of actually falling in love with the man she was promised to. At the time, most people in Paris loved Henry ‘Willy’ Gauthier Villars (Dominic West). He was a massive personality. Willy was a cultural gadfly, a charming, thoroughly gregarious man of means who never failed to pick up a check and make eyes at every woman in the room, all part of endless cycle of marketing himself as a brand name writer. 

Willy wasn’t really a man of means however. He was actually mostly broke due to his dedication to drinking, gambling and his many attempts to impress women, including his beautiful, much younger wife. Desperately in need of more writing product in the pipeline, Willy finally turns to Colette, the one writer he doesn’t have to pay and won’t hold him up for a payday. When Colette delivers an immediate smash called “Claudette,” their problems should be solved. 

Colette however, isn’t interested in writing, especially in writing something that Willy would eventually take credit for. She wants to have her own life and as their two lives chafe against each other’s needs and desires, the story picks up into a whirlwind of sex and recriminations. When Colette falls for an American woman, Willy encourages it as a way to justify his own infidelity and as a cudgel to get Colette to continue writing. When he decides that he to must sleep with this woman, things begin to get nasty. 

Colette is an exceptionally well told story about young country girl, slowly becoming the woman she was meant to be. Keira Knightley is wonderful with her huge, expressive eyes and effortless wit, she brings forth a Colette that you could never doubt was meant to be a star. If there is one issue with Knightley’s performance it is that she is so much better than co-star Dominic West, an actor inferior in every way to Knightley. 

West’s performance works only in particular context. Willy is intended to be portrayed as a spineless shell and West definitely portrays that aspect. Unfortunately, he’s so lacking in every other aspect that I found it hard to believe that he was this beloved society gadfly. I especially found it hard to believe a woman as incredible Colette could stand this guy for more than a minute. We’d be talking about one of the best movies of 2018 if an actor half as talented as Keira Knightley were playing opposite her. 

Colette was directed by Wash Westmoreland whose previous film was also a showcase for an incredible leading lady. Westmoreland directed Julianne Moore in her remarkable Alzheimer’s drama, Still Alice in 2014. That film could not be any more different from Colette but, what they share is a dedication to showcasing a leading lady in a remarkable performance. Westmoreland has a tremendous eye for moments and both Still Alice and Colette have moments of remarkable power. 

Colette features a moment in which Keira dresses down West’s Willy so much you feel like the actor might not survive. Knightley’s fury is righteous and the emotion is a wallop. Knightley has been accused of being slight as an actress, a shot at her body type more than her acting in my opinion, but here, wow, she is ferocious. Her acting power is devastating and even though West is giving her little to work with, Knightley’s power still resonates. 

Colette is a brilliant showcase for an actress too often underestimated. I can’t claim to have always valued her but in looking back, I can’t think of a single film where she hasn’t impressed me. Even in her best known role, the Oscar nominated Atonement, I didn’t like the movie, but Knightley, I absolutely adored her. She makes movies less than her better and great movies like Begin Again or the criminally under-seen Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, she makes transcendent. 

The real life Colette was a remarkable woman, a brilliant bestselling writer and openly gay at a time when such things weren’t safe. In England she could have been prosecuted for living openly with the woman she eventually came to fall in love with and the two struggled in France, though less than they would have in other parts of the world at that time. Colette persisted and her talent won the day and the movie based on her remarkable life is a loving tribute. 

See Colette for Keira Knightley and appreciate Wash Westmoreland, a director who doesn’t work all that often but when he does, he knows to work with the right leading lady. 

Movie Review: Wonder Park

Wonder Park (2019) 

Directed by Uncredited

Written by Josh Applebaum, Andrew Nemec

Starring Brianna Denski, Matthew Broderick, Ken Jeong 

Release Date March 15th, 2019 

Published March 16th, 2019 

In January of 2018 Paramount Pictures fired director Dylan Brown from the animated movie Amusement Park over allegations of inappropriate behavior. Exactly what that behavior was we do not know. What we do know is that, more than one year later, Amusement Park, now titled Wonder Park, has arrived in theaters and it plays like a movie that was lacking a director. Now, that’s easy to say under the circumstances, but I genuinely feel that the movie lacks a rudder, a steady hand guiding the ship. Wonder Park is a sloppy amalgam of cartoon tropes without a strong through-line.

Wonder Park stars the voice of Brianna Denski as June, an imaginative young girl who spends her time dreaming up elaborate theme park rides that her mother, voiced by Jennifer Garner, whispers into the ear of her stuffed monkey named Peanut, voiced by Norbert Leo Butz, who creates them with his magic marker. Hours and days are dedicated to the elaborate design of Wonder Park which mom and dad, voiced by Matthew Broderick, allow to take over the entire home.

This is necessary as when June tried to bring Wonder Park to life outside the house, she nearly destroyed the neighborhood. June created a monstrous loop de loop roller coaster out of any pieces of free wood she and her friends could muster together. Naturally, things fly off the rails quickly and June and her friend Banky, voiced by Oev Michael Urbas, are nearly run down by a truck before crashing through every fence in the neighborhood.

Mom is upset but not too much and the two set about making Wonderland into their in-home project. This goes on until mom contracts plot cancer. Mom has to go away for a while to undergo treatment and without mom around, June doesn’t feel right continuing Wonderland without her. June takes down all of the dozens upon dozens of models she’d built and takes the many stuffed animals that featured in her fantasy and puts them all in a box in a closet.

So distraught is June that she begins to slavishly dedicate herself to her father’s health and well being. She fawns over him and questions his ability to care for himself until he finally decides that she should get out of the house. June is to be whisked off to math camp for the summer but believing that dad cannot possibly get by without her, June ditches the math camp bus and ventures into the forest intent on getting back home.

June is soon distracted when she finds a small piece of her Wonderland blueprint moving magically through the air. She chases after the scrap of paper and it leads her deep into the woods where she stumbles over the entrance to Wonderland. It turns out, her imagination had manifested in a real form and was thriving until recently. Suddenly, a black cloud appears to be sucking up all of Wonderland and appears ready to consume the last of her stuffed animal friends when June arrives.

Manning the park are Greta (Mila Kunis), a wild boar and de facto leader, Steve (John Oliver), a cowardly porcupine, Boomer (Ken Hudson Campbell), a narcoleptic bear, and Gus and Cooper (Kenan Thompson and Ken Jeong), a pair of woodchuck brothers always bounding into trouble teeth first. Together, they have been battling zombie stuffed monkeys in a war to keep what little of the park is left.

Where is Peanut? That’s a little touch of mystery that the film wastes little time giving away. I won’t spoil it here but the little weight given to Peanut’s apparent disappearance is pretty weak. It should mean something that the biggest avatar for June’s mom in this story is missing but instead, the movie trips over itself getting Peanut back into the story and undermines what I would assume would be the deeper meaning of his absence.

Wonder Park wants to be something on par with Inside Out, Pixar’s ingenious and emotional trip into the emotional and intellectual world of a young girl. Unfortunately, Wonder Park lacks any of that film's substance and nuance. The characters aren’t nearly as memorable and Wonder Park is not nearly as funny as Inside Out. Indeed, Wonder Park pales in every comparison to Inside Out, even the animation which is arguably the best thing about Wonder Park, can’t hold a candle to anything Pixar has ever created, let alone the masterpiece that is Inside Out.

Weak narrative structure, meaningless metaphors and a shambling pace are the kinds of things that a good director might be able to work out. Unfortunately, Wonder Park didn’t have a director to help iron out those problems or to even patch them over well. Without that guiding hand you can sense just how much not having a director affected the failed final product that is Wonder Park. This lack of a guiding hand even extends to something as simple as the title. Despite the fact that everyone in the movie refers to Wonder Park as Wonderland, no one bothered to change the title. The words Wonder Park never appear in the movie and stand out as a symbol of the lack of focus that plagues the entirety of this animated adventure.

Movie Review Booksmart

Booksmart (2019) 

Directed by Olivia Wilde 

Written by Susanna Vogel, Katie Silberman, Sarah Haskins 

Starring Beanie Feldstein, Kaitlyn Dever, Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte

Release Date March 24th, 2019

Published March 24th, 2019

Booksmart stars Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever, a long way from her role on Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing, as Molly and Amy, High School best friends who believe they have the whole school thing locked down. Molly and Amy have done little but focus on getting into the best colleges and owning the student government in order to make sure their college resumes were strong. The pair's plan appears to have worked as both are off to amazing schools. 

I say the plan appears to have worked but appearances can be deceiving. On the final day of the school year, Molly overhears some classmates making fun of her high achieving ways but when she tries to show them up by talking about getting into Yale, she finds that her fellow classmates have also gotten into good schools. This includes a girl Molly had dismissed as a tramp, Triple A (Molly Gordon), the name gets explained, trust me, who has also gotten into Yale. 

As Molly begins to confront other students about their school plans in the fall she finds that even her nemesis/crush, the jock football goof, Nick (Mason Gooding, Cuba Gooding’s son, FYI), has landed a scholarship to Georgetown in the fall. All of the time and effort that Molly and Amy put into getting into a good school wasn’t in vain, per se, but the realization is that they could have both achieved and still found time to enjoy themselves and party. 

Thus, with one night remaining before graduation, and Nick the jock throwing a raging party at his aunt’s house, Molly convinces Amy that they deserve one night of classic High School debauchery with drugs, drinking and bad choices. But first, they will need to find out where the party is actually taking place and find some way of getting there. This leads to a series of bizarre encounters on the way to the party. 

My absolute, unquestionable, favorite part of Booksmart is Billie Lourde, Carrie Fisher’s remarkably brilliant daughter. Lourd plays Gigi, a debauched rich girl who pals around with Jared (Skyler Gisondo), a sweet, misguided rich kid with a crush on Molly. Gigi pops up at random moments throughout Booksmart and gets a big laugh every single time. Lourd is boiling with charisma and charm and comic timing and I wanted more of her even as I recognize that any more of Gigi would ruin the magic of the character. 

A close second in the race for best supporting player in Booksmart is former Daily Show correspondent and co-host of the podcast ‘2 Dope Queens,’ Jessica Williams. Williams plays Ms. Fine, Molly and Amy’s favorite teacher. Such big fans of each other, the girls actually get their teacher’s phone number in class so they can stay in touch. Williams will re-enter the story later at the party and has a funny running gag about a student with a crush on her. Williams is brilliantly funny, never going for the easiest laugh and finding ways to twist a good joke. 

The whole of Booksmart falls under the direction of actress turned first time feature film director Olivia Wilde and what a remarkable job she has done. Taking a screenplay with four credited writers, Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskin, and Katie Silberman, who has the ‘written by’ credit on IMDB, and shapes it with strong direction into a movie with memorable characters and big laughs. For a first time director, Wilde directs Booksmart with the confidence and competence of a veteran director. 

This is a wonderfully strong outing for someone with only a few short films on her directorial resume. Olivia Wilde has come out of the gates with a movie that demonstrates a director with a strong authorial voice. Wilde appears generous with her cast, giving them the time to find the jokes while shaping the scenes to the overall narrative. The film is notably raunchy, as the trailer indicates, but Booksmart also has a strong emotional component that plays into the ending I won’t spoil. It’s a lovely coda and one you should see and enjoy. 

I can’t believe I have gone this far without talking about the young stars of Booksmart, but here we are. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever are, no surprise if you’ve read this far, wonderful in Booksmart. Feldstein consistently subverts expectations and gets laughs and pathos in equal measure. Dever, playing an out of the closet teenager in authentic and achingly real fashion, has an emotional arc that is also exceptionally funny because she is naturally talented and draws the laughs out of the real. The chemistry between Feldstein and Dever is off the charts and you can’t help but adore their dynamic. 

Booksmart is one of my favorite movies of 2019. Wildly funny, smart and emotional, it’s an exceptionally strong debut feature for director Olivia Wilde. I can only imagine incredible things for Wilde’s directorial future. The raunchy humor and comparisons to Superbad may be what gets audiences in the door, but they will remember Booksmart for a terrific cast and Olivia Wilde’s smart, funny directorial choices. 

Movie Review Pet Cemetery

Pet Cemetery (2019)

Directed by Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer 

Written by Jeff Buhler

Starring Jason Clarke, John Lithgow, Amy Siemetz 

Release Date April 15th, 2019

Published April 14th, 2019

Jason Clarke, what happened man? I thought we were cool. I loved your work in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes but since then, you just keep letting me down. Winchester? Chappaquiddick? Serenity? Everest? The worst Terminator movie? What’s up man? What are you doing? You’re better than this. It’s clear your agent is a demon from the lower realms. Otherwise, I cannot explain the repeated terrible decisions that have culminated in Pet Cemetery. (Yes, I know the movie misspells ‘Cemetery’ with intent and I don’t care.)

Pet Cemetery is an adaptation of a rather weak Stephen King story about, wait for it, you won’t believe it when I tell you, a family in Maine. I know, right? A Stephen King movie in Maine, that almost always happens in his stories. This family is made up of Louis (Clarke), a doctor, his stay at home wife and mother of his children, Rachel (Amy Siemetz), daughter Ellie (Jete Lawrence) and a 2 year old son, Gage (Hugo Lavoie).

This particular family in Maine has made the mistake of hiring the most sadistic realtor in history. How else to explain selling the family a cottage so close to a busy, semi-truck heavy, highway that it's a hazard to be standing near, let alone attempting to cross. And in the backyard? Oh just a gate that leads to the realm of the dead and a creepy pet cemetery where local kids go to bury their pets while inexplicably wearing the kinds of Halloween masks that would give themselves nightmares for days. Seriously, are these kids supposed to be in a cult? No kid does this and isn't desperately mentally ill.

So, the death highway on one side and the gate between the living and the dead on the other: let’s watch what happens next. John Lithgow, so far beneath his dignity and talent he appears to be attempting to cry for help using the crinkling wrinkles of his bad makeup job as some kind of funky visual code. Lithgow is the idiot who informs his new neighbor about the hell’s gate behind his home after hearing that Ellie’s cat, Church, has been hit on the death highway.

He does this despite being fully aware of the curse on the hell’s gate. He had a dog as a kid and discovered the terrible power of the woods to bring back the dead in physical form but not in a recognizably happy or emotionally well adjusted form. They don’t come back the same and that’s certainly the case with the once cuddly Church, who returns in a deeply dyspeptic mood. He’s mean and has claws at the ready for everyone in the family.

Despite this glaring evidence of awfulness, Louis the utter dimwit, chooses not to put Church back into the actual realm of the dead with a humane syringe full of sleepy juice. Nope, he lets the cat go in the woods only to see it return and start the third act. I won’t spoil anything here, there are variations from both the book and the 1989 version of Pet Cemetery that I will allow misguided souls who wish to suffer this movie to discover for themselves.

I will say that not a single thing about the third act is nearly as scary as this overly insistent score claims it is. The twists and turns of the third act of Pet Cemetery are a procession of mediocre jump scares, poor decision making at the necessity of an idiot plot and unexplained weirdness. Mom has a plot in the movie that makes so little sense in the movie that I want to write a sonnet on just how ill-considered this subplot is. It’s really a wonder to watch the filmmakers introduce this plot and bail on giving it any kind of rationale.

If there is one thing in Pet Cemetery that is remotely effective, it’s the one thing that is all about me and nothing to do with how the movie works. I have a traumatic fear of seeing an Achilles Tendon sliced. It’s a fear that is entirely irrational and all my own. It started in childhood, perhaps with the original Pet Cemetery, and it has been an all consuming, gut-wrenching, personal nightmare ever since. I give the filmmakers here zero credit for tapping that particular well in my mind. They gave away this particular scare in the trailer which gave me ample time to leave the theater until the moment passed.

Pet Cemetery is a terrible, borderline unwatchable mediocrity. Honestly, I wish Pet Cemetery were a more conventionally bad movie. Instead, Pet Cemetery is bad in the least interesting ways. The acting is boring, the scares are bland, the direction is uninteresting. It’s all got an air of professional polish but nothing stands out as being very good. It’s bad but not in a bold or original way, it doesn’t take any chances.

I hate a number of movies for a number of reasons but I respect bad movies that take big old swings and misses. That’s interesting, being way off the mark, really missing the boat takes vision and care. The Room is that kind of movie. A visionary bad movie with a singular perspective that happens to be the exact wrong singular perspective. To a lesser extent, Suicide Squad is an example of interesting bad. They had a terrible idea how to make that movie and they stuck to their guns and failed in a spectacular fashion that I can’t help but respect a little.

No one who made Pet Cemetery appears to care about what they are doing. There is a distinct workman-like approach to Pet Cemetery, as if everyone were working hard toward building something they had no personal investment in. They could all be building different parts of a couch to be assembled and delivered as much care and personal involvement. It would be a sturdy couch but lumpy and ill-suited to all other decor.

That’s a wordy, snarky, jerky, way of saying Pet Cemetery is bad and don’t waste your money on it. As for Jason Clarke, whom I addressed at the start of this review: come back to us man. It’s not too late. I still think you can act. I still see that awesome performance in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes somewhere behind those mostly dead eyes. It’s not too late man, you can pull out the skid. I see you’re moving to television, that’s a really good first step.

Documentary Review: Distant Harmonies Pavarotti in China

Distant Harmony Pavarotti in China 

Directed by Dewitt Sage 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Luciano Pavarotti 

Release Date February 4th 1988 

Published September 27th, 2019

In 1986, in celebration of the 25th Anniversary of starting his world famous career in opera, Luciano Pavarotti went to China. As only a man of his superstar stature could Pavarotti booked a three week tour in the cloistered and controlled environment of Communist China. It was, at once, a historic moment of cultural exchange and an exchange of propaganda. The documentary, Pavarotti in China was created to further the propaganda on both sides, one slightly less sinister than the other.  

With its heavily sanitized take on the Chinese approach to art and the 'openness' of the Chinese government, Pavarotti in China was a win for the Communist regime of then President Deng Xioaping. But it was also a win for Pavarotti who was paid handsomely for the trip. Pampered as few western stars would be, Pavarotti smiles and pretends that all that is happening is mere publicity. If he's aware that he's providing cover for what we know are human rights abuses and state sponsored censorship, Pavarotti is happy to feign ignorance on camera. 

This week, that documentary, retitled Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China, is being re-released to theaters. Why? Perhaps it is to celebrate 30 years since the documentary was completed and released. Or, it could just be that a small company acquired the rights to a documentary and decided that there was a buck to be made in retitling it and peddling it on the digital marketplace for the first time in the 30 years since it was released. 

Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China opens with an odd and off-kilter trip into some uniquely Chinese customs. Art in China, in broad strokes, has a bombastic, colorful and intense style that is a lot for a westerner like myself to take in and begin to reckon with. The tradition known as kabuki has had plenty of exposure in the west but it has most often been used to demonstrate bombast, pomp and circumstance, a shorthand burlesque of ancient Chinese tradition. 

Here, it is used to demonstrate just how unique Pavarotti was from what audiences in China were used to in art. Western opera was slowly becoming a part of everyday culture in China, its innocuous, bellowing love ballads and richly dense orchestration always proved safe for the communist censors sensitive to the potential infiltration of ideas of freedom as symbolized by so much of American popular culture. 

 Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China was directed by veteran Dewitt Sage who, based on the evidence at hand in the documentary, was happy to focus on Pavarotti's big smiling face while turning a blind eye to state sponsored censorship and well known human rights abuses. Pavarotti is show to be excited to perform before an audience which pays most of their monthly income to see him. The audience has no choice but to do this, attendance at Pavarotti's concert was mandated by the government. 

So, families starved specifically so that they could attend Pavarotti's performance. That, of course, is never mentioned in the doc. You find that out with a simple Google search though which doesn't shine a great light on either the documentary or Pavarotti who had to have known while he was there who he was performing for. That said, the documentary is desperately careful to avoid anything that shines an even slightly negative light on China and Pavarotti appears perfectly willing to simply perform his music and provide no fuss in regards to how people in China are paid so little that 3 weeks of pay is barely enough to purchase a ticket to Pavarotti's show, a show they are required by their government under penalty to attend. 

Even a performance of the supposedly subversive bohemian play La Boheme is but a toothless ode to young romance once the Chinese censors get involved. I’m assuming the censors got involved, it’s clear that Pavarotti’s performance of La Boheme is not intended to have any edge to it, none of the passionate rhetoric of La Boheme is heard during the performance. At the heart of Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China is that disconnect between Pavarotti the artist and Pavarotti the man. 

Is Pavarotti a gutless, heartless, mercenary out for a buck regardless of morality or is he genuinely so naïve to the human rights situation in China that the suffering never registers with him? Distant Harmonies is not a movie intended to grapple with that idea and yet, it unintentionally begs that question and almost forces anyone with a brain to question Pavarotti's motives. The documentary just wants to be a Pavarotti travelogue in China but it take a significant amount of delusion to believe that that was actually possible. 

Movie Review Shazam

Shazam (2019) 

Directed by David F. Sandberg

Written by Henry Gayden 

Starring Zachary Levi, Djimon Hounsou, Mark Strong, Jack Dylan Grazer 

Release Date April 5th, 2019 

Published April 4th, 2019 

Shazam stars Zachary Levi in the story of a boy named Billy Batson. Billy is 15 years old, young Billy is played by Asher Angel, and an orphan. Years earlier, Billy was separated from his mother at a carnival in Philadelphia. She disappeared and young Billy is convinced that he simply needs to find her again so they can be reunited as a family. The reality that his mother never looked for him after that day is something he is eager to overlook.

Since he was 4 years old, Billy has been shuttled from several foster homes that he has abandoned to hit the streets searching for his mother. The latest home is one filled with a diverse group of kids that are Billy’s age and younger and who seem open to welcoming him to the family. That can only happen however, once Billy opens himself to his new family and that is part of the plot journey of Shazam.

The plot of the movie kicks in when Billy saves his new brother, Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) from some school bullies and winds up impressing the wizard known as “Shazam” (Djimon Hounsou) with his bravery. For years, Shazam has kept the spirits of the seven deadly sins locked away while he searched for someone pure of heart to take over his magical powers. He chooses Billy despite his misgivings about Billy’s selfishness in his search for his mother.

With the power of Shazam, Billy grows into a more than 6 foot tall, red-suited, white caped, gold-booted, superhero. It takes a while, but eventually, he realizes that he can switch between his superhero persona and his kid persona by saying the name Shazam. This leads to a legitimately charming sequence, overly familiar from just about every superhero debut movie, in which he and Freddy begin to test his superhero powers.

We should be put off by this sequence as we’ve seen the same thing in Iron Man, Captain America, Batman, each iteration of the Spider-Man movies, Ant-Man, et cetera. And yet, despite the cliche, these scenes do work in Shazam. I didn’t mind the cliche this time because Zachary Levy and Jack Dylan Grazer are having such a good time with these cliches. The fun they are having doing these scenes is palpable and I had fun because they were having so much fun.

It turns out, much to my surprise, that Zachary Levy was perfect for the role of a childlike superhero. My personal bias against Levy for his dimwitted performance on TV’s Chuck and his dreadful role in one of the more recent Chipmunk movies had blinded me to the legitimate talent he has for silliness. That talent for silliness is exactly what Shazam needed to separate it from the otherwise dour and glowering D.C movie universe.

D.C has a reputation for being grim, especially under the direction of Zach Snyder.This universe needed something like Shazam to force the universe into a more of a fun place to be. That vibe began with James Wan’s Aquaman, but Shazam is the first real exploration of a comedic place within the D.C universe. It’s a course correction for D.C where director-auteur Snyder seemed to believe that the only way to escape the shadow of Marvel was to go almost absurdly serious.

If D.C ever brings the Justice League together again, Shazam will provide a strong leavening force, a lightheartedness that may be the key to bringing this to a place where the Marvel movies have been from the beginning, an entertaining and fun and exciting place. The all or nothing, apocalyptic vibe of the D.C Universe was the worst part of the Superman movies and while Wonder Woman made that tolerable, we needed a movie like Shazam to bring a little light into that darkness.

This is rather ironic coming from Swedish born director David F Sandberg whose previous features were the horror movies Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation. He’s not exactly the guy you would expect to bring lighthearted fun to the DCEU but that is exactly what he’s done. Shazam has a lot of laughs, a lot of big laughs. Laughs in which we are more often than not laughing with the movie and not at the movie.

That was a major concern for me based off of the trailer for Shazam. I was concerned that I would find the movie pathetic and laugh at things that perhaps were not intended while not laughing in places where laughs were sought. I didn’t laugh much at the film’s trailer which wasn’t embarrassingly bad but was definitely awkward and leaned far too heavily on the immaturity of the character of Shazam.

The movie leans heavily on that same immaturity but given a little more room to breathe, Zachary Levy makes it work. And when it is time for the movie to take on a modest amount of seriousness in the final act, Levy makes that work as well, he earns enough of the needed weight for us to genuinely care about him and his newfound family and the peril posed by the film’s big bad, played by Mark Strong.

Here, unfortunately, is where I must talk about the flaws of Shazam. Mark Strong is unquestionably the weakest part of this movie. His Dr Sivana is remarkably unremarkable. Strong is a fine actor but I didn’t buy into his charismatic, free, whiny villain. We spend far too much time on his uninteresting backstory and he’s further undone by the underwhelming special effects that make up both the Seven Deadly Sins and the rubbery CGI Strong in the flying scenes.

Sylvana's backstory is part of why Shazam’s runtime is way too long. As enjoyable as the movie is, it is terribly bloated at more than 130 minutes. The film repeats a little too much of Billy and Shazam being frightened and incompetent and while the idea of a learning curve for a kid superhero makes sense, the film could have used a device to speed things up so that the middle didn’t sag so much. Losing a few minutes from Sivana’s full backstory would have been a good first step.

Nevertheless, even a bloated runtime and underwhelming villain didn’t prevent me from enjoying Shazam. The film has way too many good laughs and way too much fun for me to dislike it. Shazam is joyously silly and yet still a movie that can fit nicely into the overall DCEU. The four franchises needed a lighthearted shot in the arm ala Ant-Man in the Marvel Universe, and Shazam is a terrific comedic fit.

Movie Review Serenity

Serenity (2019) 

Directed by Steven Knight 

Written by Steven Knight

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Jason Clarke, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Djimon Hounsou 

Release Date January 25th, 2019

Published January 19th, 2019 

Serenity is a highly ambitious and deeply misbegotten attempt to make a modern film noir. Writer-Director Steven Knight has something going for him in Serenity but continues to undermine himself and his movie with bizarre choices that lead to an unsatisfying and almost laughable, laugh out loud conclusion. The film strands an incredible cast in what approximates a Shyamalan level of lunatic aspiration. 

Matthew McConaughey stars in Serenity as, no I am not making this up, Baker Dill. Baker is a fishing boat captain catering to tourists on a mysterious tropical island called Plymouth. Baker has a passion for fishing but specifically a passion for one specific fish, a giant Tuna that he has come to call Justice, and yes it is a heavily tortured metaphor. No points for guessing that as the film hammers the point into your brain pan. 

Baker is seemingly driven only by this giant tuna but lately other things have begun to permeate his consciousness. Specifically, Baker has recently been plagued by memories and visions of a son he left behind when he went to war in Iraq. Upon his return, his then girlfriend and the mother of his child, Karen (Anne Hathaway), has moved on and married another man and cut Baker out of her and her son’s life. 

Baker’s visions of his son are truly bizarre as he appears to be able to hear his son’s voice and vaguely communicate with him with some sort of water based ESP. In one of the film’s epically bizarre scenes, a naked Baker swims in the ocean with his also naked teenage son. Why? There is no good reason, it’s just something that director Steven Knight thought might communicate the strange, water based ESP thing I mentioned before. The nudity is an off-putting choice to say the least. 

Out of the water, Baker is approached by his ex-wife with a proposition. Karen wants Baker to take her husband Frank (Jason Clarke) out fishing and toss him to the fishes. In exchange, Karen is offering $10 million dollars and perhaps the chance to see his son again. Baker immediately rejects the idea despite Karen telling him that Frank has been abusive toward her and toward their son. After meeting the epically awful Frank, Baker still resists but will his psychic connection to his son change his mind. 

No, that last line is not me being snarky… well, not entirely snarky. The plot does legitimately turn on whether Baker’s fuzzy, incomplete, ESP connection to his son will cause him to accept the offer to murder Frank and it is as goofy as that sounds. There is a great deal more however to the connection between father and son including a looney final act twist that left me utterly gobsmacked. The ending of Serenity is surprising but not a good surprise, more of a WTF surprise. 

In an effort to take the classic noir thriller to a place that might appeal to the hip, modern, technically advanced older teen and twenty-something crowd, director Steven Knight has conceived a twist that is remarkably hokey and tone deaf. It’s the kind of twist that middle aged folks like myself laugh at and younger types will straight up ignore in the way you ignore grandpa’s less than helpful comments on Facebook posts. 

It’s a twist that works remarkably well at alienating audiences of all ages, uniting generations in eye-rolls of epic proportions and derisive laughter that will last till we reach the parking lot of the local theater. Honestly, I do admire the sheer madness of the twist attempted in Serenity but I can’t help but mock the result. The execution is so laughable and clumsy that jaw dropping exasperation can only evolve into giggles of sheer schadenfreude. 

I take no genuine pleasure in laughing at rather than with Serenity. These are a group of incredibly talented actors and a director I really do respect. Steven Knight directed Locke, an exceptional and experimental thriller that got the best out of the great Tom Hardy and demonstrated the talent for talking out loud to himself that would make Venom so sneakily entertaining. Knight knows how to make a movie. Serenity is merely an example of a hill too hard to climb to a destination that wasn’t worth climbing to. 

Movie Review Official Secrets

Official Secrets (2019)

Directed by Gavin Hood

Written by Gavin Hood 

Starring Keira Knightley, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, Rhys Ifans

Release Date October 18th, 2019

Published October 18th, 2019 

Official Secrets is the kind of sturdy, unassailable drama that director Gavin Hood is good at making. Dispassionate and a little dull, longing for colorful characters to liven up the presentation, but filled with factual interpretation that is true to the subject and dramatized well enough to hold your attention and earn most of the feelings intended by the story being told. Call it the church of being just good enough. 

Official Secrets, a title I struggle to remember even as it is a title that fits well in the context of the story, stars Keira Knightley in the true story of Katherine Gunn,  a worker bee at a British intelligence agency in the midst of the most recent Iraq conflict. The American government is pushing hard for war and Tony Blair has become George W Bush’s go-to ally for getting the pro-war message out. Everyday, the case for war is growing and it will take a revolutionary act of defiance to slow it down. 

That was the act of Katherine Gunn, an act of revolutionary defiance. Gunn stole a memo from her work interpreting and transcribing intelligence drama for the GSA. In the memo was proof that the Americans were spying on members of allied countries in hopes of pressuring those countries to vote in favor of going to war against Saddam Hussein. Releasing this explosive memo to the public would be an embarrassment to British leadership and turn the British public further against the war. 

With the help of a war protesting friend, the memo goes from Katherine, through to a reporter at the Observer newspaper, Martin Bright who, with the help of his editor, Peter Beaumont (Matthew Goode) and a fellow reporter working in America, Ed Vulliamy (Rhys Ifans), manages to confirm the information and print it in the newspaper. You assume from here that this is an inspiring story of a whistleblower but Official Secrets doesn’t seek to inspire as much as it strives to tell what really happened. 

The reality was that it took weeks before the memo was published and enough time passed that Katherine began to think it would never be printed and she was okay with that. Rather than being single mindedly obsessed with getting the truth out, Katherine is frightened and resigned to the fate of the world going to war even as she knows it should not be happening. When the memo is published, Katherine becomes exposed and rather than being inspired to the fight, she is dragged into defending herself before finally buying into her own cause. 

That’s pretty much as it happened in reality as well. Katherine Gunn became a revolutionary almost by accident. She wanted to stop the war but she was plagued by doubts and was even willing to forget about the whole thing and go on with her life while the war that she knew was illegal and unjust raged on. Katherine is a hero but a complex one and Keira Knightley does well to play that conflict and allow that to drive the narrative nearly as much as exposing the war as a fraud. 

Of course, this movie doesn’t do us much good now. Movies like Official Secrets feel obsolete in the wake of all that has happened, including the Iraq War, Afghanistan and the conflicts we appear to be readying for around the globe today courtesy of a President seemingly spoiling for a fight. It’s great to have a historic document like Official Secrets but the film doesn’t escape from the futility of the history that inspired it. 

You have a duty to stand against tyranny is a good message but not one that Official Secrets makes all that memorably or forcefully. 

Movie Review Hellboy (2019)

Hellboy (2019) 

Directed by Neil Marshall

Written by Andrew Cosby

Starring David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Daniel Dae Kim, Thomas Haden Church 

Release Date April 12th, 2019 

Published April 11th, 2019

Do we really need a Hellboy reboot? No, no we do not. But, Hollywood does not appear to care for our opinion on this matter. Hellboy is a character that many people recognize and thus may pay money to see and regardless of the compromised state of the character and the story, his marketability is what truly matters. Hellboy has a Q-rating that rings a bell in marketing meetings among the right demographic of desirable young consumers. That’s why we have a new Hellboy.

Stranger Things breakout star, David Harbor, picks up the mantle of Hellboy, for this reboot. In this re-imaging of Hellboy, we join the story with our hero, already a member of the Paranormal Bureau of Investigation and working for his father, Professor Bloom (Ian McShane). Hellboy is out on a personal errand as we join his story, he’s traveled to Mexico to locate a friend and fellow agent who has gone missing in the world of Lucha Libre wrestling.

This is a clever and colorful way to start the movie but, sadly, it’s all downhill from here. Hellboy finds his friend and is forced to kill him when he becomes a demon bat. Before he dies, the friend warns Hellboy that the end of the world is coming. In a prologue to the story, we meet the Blood Queen (Milla Jovavich). The Blood Queen intended to bring monsters and demons out of the shadows and destroy humanity thousands of years ago before she was stopped by King Arthur and Merlin.

Now, The Blood Queen is about to make a comeback. Despite having been beheaded and having her body carved into several pieces and locked inside boxes, The Blood Queen is set to return and only Hellboy and his friends can stop her from destroying humanity. Aiding Hellboy are his long time friend Alice (Sasha Lane), a psychic with ever changing and growing powers, and Major Ben Daimio, an English secret agent who claims to hate monsters like Hellboy while harboring a monstrous secret of his own.

Together, reluctantly, they will battle The Blood Queen and several other deathly threats put forward by director Neil Marshall, a man with a known knack for quality monsters. Neil Marshall was the director of one of my favorite monster movies of recent memory, 2005’s The Descent. Where that remarkable talent has gone since then is anyone’s guess. Marshall followed up The Descent with a mediocre Mad Max knock off called Doomsday and has never again looked like the director who crafted The Descent.

Hellboy demonstrates some of the craft that Marshall was once known for but it is also lacking in many of the same ways that Marshall’s post-The Descent features are lacking. Much like Doomsday, which cribbed heavily from the worst tropes of the Mad Max movies, Hellboy feels overly familiar with an arc that is indistinguishable from any number of fantasy adventure or superhero-comic book movies. There is little to no invention in this story.

David Harbour cuts a giant figure as Hellboy but the choice to direct him as a larger, slower, version of Deadpool is perhaps the film's biggest failing. The R-Rating for Hellboy essentially gets second billing to Hellboy himself with the film using the freedom of the R-Rating to attempt to appeal to hardcore comic fans. Unfortunately, Hellboy lacks the skill and intelligence of the makers of Deadpool and there is simply no wit and not nearly enough style to the R-Rated violence in Hellboy as there was in Deadpool.

Hellboy doesn’t need an R-Rating. The violence that director Neil Marshall has employed that earns the film that rating never feels organic or necessary. The violence of Hellboy somehow fails to even induce shock and without that pinch of shock it comes off as merely gross. Hellboy comes off as childish and infantile in comparison to other R-Rated heroes such as Logan and Deadpool, and that’s saying something given the level of juvenile in Deadpool 2. In Deadpool, the hardcore violence is delivered with such style and humor that no matter what Deadpool the character does, the film feels mature. Hellboy never achieves anything similar.

Hellboy is a kid brother’s version of an R-Rated fantasy comic. It’s all flash and no style. It’s all blood and guts and no character or wit. Hellboy has all the pretension toward something edgy without ever actually becoming edgy or even controversial. Small kids might lose sleep over some of the gory images of Hellboy 2019, but anyone with fully developed sensibilities will find the film witless, charmless and infantile, especially when compared to other R-Rated comic book hero stories