Movie Review Logan Lucky

Logan Lucky (2017) 

Directed by Steven Soderbergh 

Written by Rebecca Blunt 

Starring Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Katie Holmes, Riley Keough, Daniel Craig, Hilary Swank, Katherine Waterston, Sebastian Stan 

Release Date August 18th, 2017 

Published August 17th, 2017 

Being a fan of the American history podcast The Dollop allows me to watch a movie like Logan Lucky and never for a moment find the story implausible. Take a listen to them tell the remarkable true story titled Jet-Pack Madness and you will find within it a story every bit as brilliant as a Coen Brothers comedy. Everything in Logan Lucky feels completely plausible when you compare it to such historic silliness as what transpired with the Jet-Pack or the L.A Freeway Shootout or The Human Taco.

The Dollop has nothing to do with Logan Lucky but I could not help thinking of how Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds would tell this story if it were true. I imagine it would be just as good as the movie Steven Soderbergh has made, a crazy story of crime, family, pride, NASCAR, and the South. That Logan Lucky is also a heist movie is nearly incidental, as if these characters existing as they do might make for a good enough story but that they happen to pulling off a multi-million dollar NASCAR-themed heist certainly makes things even more colorful.

The Logan family is cursed or at least that is what little brother Clyde Logan (Adam Driver) believes and he would be happy to regale you with his tragic family background while he pours beer at a West Virginia bar called Duck-Tape. Older brother Jimmy (Channing Tatum) doesn’t buy into the curse, though Clyde’s point is understandable, he’s just back from losing an arm in Iraq while Jimmy lost a scholarship to play Quarterback at LSU when he blew out his knee and just as we meet him, Jimmy is fired from his job working construction underneath the famed Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Nevertheless, Jimmy doesn’t buy into Clyde’s curse talk, especially since he’s decided to pull off a multi-million-dollar vault heist and doesn't need the bad juju on his mind right now. Having been fired from his job where he operated an earth mover beneath the famed North Carolina race track, Jimmy has found out where all the money from the stadium concessions goes and how it gets there. The only thing standing in his way is the vault but Jimmy happens to know a guy who can help, if they can get him out of prison.\

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Ferrari

Ferrari (2023) 

Directed by Michael Mann

Written by Troy Kennedy Martin 

Starring Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley, Penelope Cruz 

Release Date December 25th, 2023 

Published December 21st, 2023 

There is no question from me that Michael Mann is an exceptional director. His talent is undeniable but if you need proof, check his Oscar nominations for The Insider and for being a Producer on The Aviator. His films have seen remarkable success and shown incredible staying power. Take, for instance, his beloved classic Heat which still gets rapturous reviews from new audiences who discover it year after year. You can sense that I am setting you up, right? It's not entirely what you think. Michael Mann's newest film, Ferrari, starring Adam Driver, features exceptional direction, superb cinematography, and exceptional effects and stunt driving. 

I just can't make myself care about the subject. Is that a failing of Michael Mann as a filmmaker or, is it merely that the problems of a rich, philandering, man obsessed with car racing just isn't relatable or compelling as the lead character in a movie. Adam Driver invests the character of real life car magnate, Enzo Ferrari, with charisma, personality, and a not terribly distracting Italian accent but, he's still playing a character that defied my ability to care about him. I don't care about car racing. And, I supremely, assuredly do not care about the supposed problems of a very rich man on a journey to remaining a rich and troubled man despite being responsible for multiple deaths in the pursuit of his love of race cars. 

Ferrari picks up the story of Enzo Ferrari, founder of the famed Ferrari car company, in 1957, in the immediate aftermath of his beloved son and heir, Dino Ferrari. The death of his son has driven a wedge between Enzo and his wife, Enzo's mother, Laura Ferrari (Penelope Cruz), a turbulent personality expressing her pain and grief via explosions of vitriol toward the husband she feels is responsible for their son's death. By Laura's reasoning, Dino stretched himself to the breaking point pursuing his father's love of car racing, causing him to die at 24 from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. 

The rift between husband and wife has grown to such a degree that Enzo has started a new family with his mistress, Linda Lardi (Shailene Woodley). Enzo has purchased a villa for Linda and their son, Piero, where he comes to stay regularly while somehow not letting on to Laura that he's been cheating. This is a lot padding and not particularly compelling. Woodley is fine but exists mostly as a device to strain Enzo and Laura's marriage, regardless of how true the story of Enzo and his mistress may be. Michael Mann doesn't appear to be very interested in developing Laura as a character or giving her a function in the film beyond being a plot device. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review 65

65 (2023) 

Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods 

Written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods 

Starring Adam Driver, Arian Greenblatt, Nika King, Chloe Coleman 

Release Date March 10th, 2023 

Published March 12th, 2023 

65 does little to justify its own existence. The sci-fi action movie starring Adam Driver is an incredibly basic and repetitive action movie that happens to include space travel and people from a planet other than Earth. The core story is about a man trying to protect a small girl from a perilous and uncaring world, a story reflected in his personal life where he has a daughter who is sick and dying from an unspecified disease. Saving this small girl in the context of a mission on a foreign planet is intended as commentary on protecting the man's daughter from an illness that may kill her. 

That sounds like it has potential and perhaps it does but nothing really comes from that potential. Adam Driver plays Captain Mills. Mills has been offered three times his salary to take a group of people in cryo-pods from one side of the universe to another. It's a trip that will take two years to complete. This means spending two years away from his wife, (Nika King), and their sick daughter (Chloe Coleman). Why do this? Because the family needs the money to give their daughter a chance to survive. 

The plot of 65 kicks in when an unexpected meteor shower shatters the calm of an otherwise mundane space trip. This field of meteors seemingly came out of nowhere, Mills was asleep when it happened, demonstrating just how unexpected this was. The ship crashes on a nearby, seemingly uninhabited planet. Uninhabited by intelligent life forms anyway. Instead, the planet is populated by giant monsters that we recognize as dinosaurs, though Mills doesn't seem to know what they are. 

Mills must then find an escape pod which is about 12 kilometers from where his part of the ship crashed. His journey is complicated when he learns that one of his cryo-pod passengers is still alive. Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), is foreign to Mills. She doesn't speak the same language and this communication barrier will provide further complication as they attempt to navigate the 12 kilometers of lush jungle, low and dangerous open space, and a mountain range. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review White Noise

White Noise (2022) 

Directed by Noah Baumbach 

Written by Noah Baumbach 

Starring Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle 

Release Date November 25th, 2022

Published November 18th, 2022 

Netflix 

I've never read Don Delillo's much heralded 1985 novel, White Noise. Others have told me it is quite brilliant. I'm told it has a visionary quality that makes it quite worthy of being adapted at any time. From what I know about White Noise, Noah Baumbach, director of intimate dramas about awkward families and spiky characters, would not be the most likely choice to direct this material. The story carries elements of science fiction, high minded satire ala Joseph Heller, and a borderline unfilmable obsession with death. Unfilmable in that most audiences won't find the theme one they want to watch play out in a movie. 

It's rather perfect that an iconoclast like Baumbach would choose something so seemingly impossible as his first big budget directorial effort. It's also kind of perfect that he's taken millions of dollars of Netflix money and made an indie movie on a blockbuster budget. White Noise is filled with showy, dramatic speeches, and wildly strange moments of action fitting of a director of esoteric human drama. White Noise is filled with numerous themes but none of which seems to stand out or find any satisfying resolution.

Adam Driver stars in White Noise as J.A.K or Jack Gladney, father of 5 children from 4 marriages to five different women. His new wife, Babette (Greta Gerwig), shares with Jack a despairing fear of death. What begins as a somewhat romantic, fatalistic conversation about how they can't live without each other and making the case that one should die before the other in order to save them from comparative states of horrific grief. 

Babette's fear of death manifests in her beginning to take an experimental drug that is supposed to relieve her of the fear of death. Instead, the drug just effects Babette's memory in general making her forgetful but still deeply in fear of death. For Jack, he expresses his fear of death through his work as a professor at the fictional College on the Hill, located somewhere in Ohio. Jack has earned fame in Academic circles for his intensive course, Hitler Studies, where he opines on the evils of the dictator and the culture that made him possible. 

At one point, White Noise comes to a complete halt for a dueling speech between Driver's Jack and his best friend, Professor Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle). In an incredible verbal dance, Jack and Murray each pontificate about the area of their expertise. Jack, of course, knows all about Hitler while Murray's unique field of study is Elvis Presley. The pair find strange and fascinating parallels between Hitler and the King of Rock N'Roll in each having attachment issues related to their mothers, their absent fathers, and their incredible ability to draw and compel a crowd. 

Neither Driver and Cheadler nor Jack and Murray are competing here. Rather, the pair is improvising a intricate dance of intellects that dovetail off of one another, building on each others points, coming to the point of interrupting each other but never seeming to steal the attention away. At one moment, Jack recedes into the crowd of gathering professors and students, mesmerized by their tete a tete and then he re-emerges in a different part of the crowd, rising from a crouch to take hold of the scene, and Murray steps back in awe to enjoy his fellow Professor's presentation. 

It's the best scene in White Noise and it is so good that I want to recommend the movie solely based on the quality of Driver and Cheadle's magnificent duet. I want to recommend it but I am not sure that I can. You see, what remains of White Noise following this bravura effort is far too strange, obtuse, and esoteric that I am not sure who the audience for this is meant to be. White Noise has director Baumbach tapping various styles from other directors from Altman to Wes Anderson to Mike Nicholas and Stanley Kubrick. The homage throughout White Noise is fascinating but I am not sure it adds up to anything in the end. 

I'm told that Delillo's novel actually thrives on trainwrecking the narrative into some inescapable place and leaping to a new narrative thread. White Noise, in fact, depicts an actual trainwreck that serves the purpose of shifting the narrative from quirky academic satire to an equally quirky survival thriller. The family is forced to flee from their home after a train is hit by a semi-truck carry flammable chemicals. The train was carrying toxic waste and the result is what the book and film call an 'Airborne Toxic Event.' Jack ends up being exposed to the Toxic Event and assumes that it is going to kill him but that is only used to underline his ongoing obsession with death. 

The Airborne Toxic Event portion of White Noise includes a chase scene and chaotic, end of the world preaching and then just peters out into the family returning home and going on with their lives. It's weirdly clever and provides yet another narrative trainwreck into another story, though slightly less successful than the actual trainwreck scene. The final act then becomes a domestic drama as Jack investigates Babette's experimental drug. I doubt that I can spoil the movie but I am nevertheless going to end my description there. 

White Noise is a particularly unsatisfying experience. On one hand, I love some of the ambition that Baumbach demonstrates. The stuff with Driver and Don Cheadle and Hitler and Elvis is genuinely riveting. Driver's performance is weird, as is Cheadle and Greta Gerwig's performances but they are entertainingly weird, they match the weird tone of White Noise. The acting is really first rate in terms of how it marries with the wild ideas of White Noise. That said, I can see where a more mainstream audience than myself, might be put off by the theatrics, the showiness, and the un-ironic bigness of these performances. 

I also love the film credits which encompasses the final scene of the movie to the very end of the last credit on screen. It's essentially a music video reminiscent of the wildly anarchic and inventive style of a Spike Jonze video. The lengthy choreographed sequence marries dancers and non-dancers a like in a series of coordinated movements that mimic and mock the daily mannered pleasantries of grocery stores in our obsessive consumer culture. Actual dancers glide amid the coordinated movements of shoppers, smiling, everyday consumers, going about the business of selecting their varieties of brands and filling carts to overflow with item after item. 

Consumer culture is among the many broad targets of White Noise though what point is being made about consumer culture is far too broad to determine. That really is the defining quality of the movie White Noise, it's a scattershot blast of vague commentary on modern life, some of it quite interesting and entertaining and quite a lot of it presented without much insight, humor, or meaning. I could excuse that as being just like life where not everything has a deeper meaning but that feels like a cop out by both me as a writer and critic and by the movie which appears incapable of settling on any kind of point. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Marriage Story

Marriage Story (2019) 

Directed by Noah Baumbach

Written by Noah Baumbach

Starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta

Release Date December 6th, 2019 

Published December 2nd, 2019 

Only Noah Baumbach could make his least cynical movie about divorce. Cynicism about other people, about relationships, romantic or parental, is at the core of Baumbach’s work. Baumbach has always had a sharp ear for dialogue that cuts to the heart of intimate conflict and in movies such as Greenberg or Margot at the Wedding, he’s used that sharpness to darkly humorous effect. His films are often very insightful even as they are especially bitter. 

Thus we arrive at Marriage Story, Baumbach’s most mature and thoughtful movie that finds places of deep, ugly, honesty and yet manages to end on a note that doesn’t leave you feeling that he loathes the rest of humanity. Marriage Story may be about the desperately sad end of what appeared to be a happy and fulfilling marriage but somehow, Baumbach turns that ugliness into something beautiful and bordering on hopeful. 

Marriage Story stars Adam Driver as Charlie and Scarlett Johannson as Nicole. Together, they are the parents of Henry (Azhy Robertson) and are part of a successful theater company where Charlie is a rising star director and Nicole is the star. They’re friends believed they were a perfect couple but now, they are getting a divorce. Nicole is moving to Los Angeles for a television job and Henry is going with her. 

The plan is for Charlie and Nicole to work out their divorce together with no lawyers. That lasts about a day or so until Nicole accepts some advice to visit with Nora (Laura Dern). Nora helps Nicole see the challenges ahead of her in trying to establish herself in Los Angeles while Charlie pressures her to move back to New York City. Nicole wants Charlie to recognize that she wants things as much as he wants particular things. Eventually, Nicole agrees that hiring Nora is her only choice. 

Blindsided, Charlie is forced to get his own lawyer, first turning to a high powered, expensive brawler, Jay Marrotta (Ray Liotta) before settling on the less expensive and more fatherly, Burt (Alan Alda). Burt urges Charlie to settle and even consider moving to Los Angeles as his case for living in New York appears weak compared to Nicole’s case for living in Los Angeles. Both Charlie and Nicole have strong reasons for wanting what they want and the movie is fair to both sides.

There isn’t much more of a plot to describe in Marriage Story. The movie isn’t about plot, it’s about characters and in Charlie and Nicole, we have some of the most indelible characters that Noah Baumbach has created in a career filled with great characters. In Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson, Baumbach has a pair of actors who are magnetic personalities. No matter what kind of nasty or thoughtless words Baumbach puts in their mouths, Driver and Johannson remain people we care for deeply. 

Since Marriage Story isn’t a movie that is about plot, we are forced to rely on moments and Driver and Johannson are incredible at creating moments with these characters. The standout moment is an argument that is verbally violent. It’s a scene of remarkable energy and intensity deepened by how real it feels. The going for the jugular in this scene is not showy, not over the top, it has an organic, earnest, and angry quality that is raw and real. 

In a movie filled with great moments, another that stands out is a musical performance. Marriage Story is not a musical and the two musical scenes are not fourth wall breaking moments of experimental cinema. Rather, both scenes are organic to the performative nature of these two wonderful characters. The one that stayed with me was the performance of a Gershwin song by Adam Driver. He may not be a natural singer but his manner carries the song, an almost accidental confession of his vulnerability. Driver’s acting sells the performance in ways a trained singer might not be able to achieve.  

Marriage Story is Noah Baumbach’s first visual masterpiece. The direction is flawless with the sets and the compositions adding depth and beauty to the complex emotions of this story. Some visuals are a little on the nose such as a scene where Charlie and Nicole are on opposite sides of a gate they are helping each other to close but for the most part, the look of Marriage Story with its bright, spare spaces filled with visual dividers is a lovely reflection of the divisions growing between Charlie and Nicole. 

The ways in which Baumbach and his crew visually divide Charlie and Nicole is subtle yet striking when you do notice it. My favorite moment is in Nora’s expensive law office. A pair of overhead lights act as a visual dividing line with Nicole on one side and Charlie on the other as the camera slowly recedes from the scene. It’s a gorgeous use of setting to underline the story being told. 

The script for Marriage Story is the best of Baumbach’s career, a lacerating yet lovely script that establishes why Charlie and Nicole can’t remain married while making neither one the villain. That’s quite a trick to pull off. Movies like this tend to rely on one side being the villain but not Marriage Story. Both Charlie and Nicole have done things that they regret and Charlie has been openly neglectful of Nicole’s desires but for the most part, both sides are treated fairly. 

There are no illusions about Nicole and Charlie’s future, no hints that a simple resolution is coming that will make everything okay and yet, the movie has a hopeful quality. The message appears to be that there is life after divorce and recriminations are like small cuts that eventually heal. Forgiveness is part of loving someone, even if it isn't the kind of love that keeps a marriage together. 

I mentioned at the start that Marriage Story is Noah Baumbach’s least cynical movie and it is. You will need to see the movie to find out why. That’s not to say that there is a spoiler per se, I don’t think I could spoil this movie, but there are emotional elements that you need to access for yourself to understand what I mean when I say the movie is less cynical than movies like The Squid and the Whale or Mistress America or his previous Netflix effort, The Meyerowitz Stories. 

Movie Review: BlackKKlansman

BlacKKKlansman (2018) 

Directed by Spike Lee

Written by Spike Lee 

Starring John David Washington, Adam Driver, Topher Grace, Laura Harrier Ryan Eggold 

Release Date August 10th, 2018

Published August 9th, 2018

BlacKKKlansman is one of the most ambitious and daring movies to come down the pike in quite some time. This story about a real-life Colorado Springs, Colorado cop who decided to take on the Ku Klux Klan is bold, audacious, funny and deeply compelling. That is is also a biting satire of our current political climate also serves to remind us why Spike Lee remains one of the most vital and necessary filmmakers.

BlacKKKlansman stars John David Washington, Denzel’s son, as Ron Stallworth, a man fresh out of college and eager to become a police detective. His ambition brings him to Colorado Springs, Colorado where he seizes his opportunity to quickly move up the ranks by volunteering for undercover work. Whether intentional or not, Ron takes advantage of the racism of the department as they need someone young and black to go undercover at meetings of so-called black radicals.

After succeeding in his first undercover gig, Ron is fully promoted to detective in the Intelligence division. It is here where the story of BlacKKKlansman kicks into gear. Seeing an ad in the paper for the Ku Klux Klan recruitment drive, Ron decides to pick up the phone and find out how the Klan recruits. Ron quickly ingratiates himself to the local Klan leader, Walter (Ryan Eggold) who invites him to a meeting.

Naturally, Ron himself can’t go undercover at the meeting, so, he’s partnered with Flip (Adam Driver). Together they will catfish the Klan into believing that Ron Stallworth is a former Vietnam veteran eager for the chance to be part of the coming race war on the side of ‘The Organization’ as they call themselves when in public so as not to arouse suspicion and maintain the anonymity that comes with their traditional hood and shroud.

Where the story goes from there you will need to see for yourself. I will tell you that the scope of the story includes the longtime Grand Wizard of the KKK, David Duke, here played by Topher Grace in a performance that truly takes the piss out of Duke and his self-righteous attempts at mainstreaming his hateful rhetoric. Grace is terrific at being the butt of the film’s best gags, especially the final payoff laugh which sends the crowd home happy.

This is however, J.D Washington’s show and boy is this kid ready for stardom. Yes, you can definitely hear some of his dad’s voice, his unique inflection, coming from J.D but he demonstrates here, with the help of Spike Lee, that he is fully his own man. This is a breakout, charismatic, a star is born, kind of leading man performance. Washington is funny, confident, bold and sympathetic and yet far from perfect, still wet behind the ears but eager to learn in charming fashion.

Adam Driver as well is fantastic in BlacKKKlansman. Driver’s choice of roles is so smart, always seeming to choose roles that play to his unique strengths. Many of BlacKKKlansman’s best scenes are played in Driver’s eyes, with the thinly veiled control he has over the contempt he feels for the Klan he’s pretending to be part of and for himself for having to spout the racist nonsense back at these redneck losers. It’s a performance of measured cool and Driver is phenomenal.

Spike Lee hasn’t felt this much like the Spike Lee of old since 2002’s 25th Hour. This is Spike once again on an epic scale. This is Spike indulging his style once again rather than pushing his instincts aside to make something mainstream ala 2006’s Inside Man, a fine movie, but not a Spike Lee movie, and 2013’s Oldboy, a film idea doomed at conception. BlacKKKlansman takes us back to when Spike Lee was more than just a director, he was a creative life force.

BlacKKKlansman is vital and angry, funny and dangerous. The film engages and repels audiences, it challenges you and ingratiates you. If you are uncomfortable with political movies, BlacKKKlansman is not for you as it is a film that challenges you with parallels to today’s politics and the dangerous attempts too many people in the political realm have made to equate the hate of bigots and racists with the anger of people suffering from the hate of bigots and racists.

BlacKKKlansman is bold and fearless filmmaking filled with style and humor, fiery polemical rhetoric and damn good storytelling. BlacKKKlansman is a Spike Lee Joint as vital and exciting as anything he’s made since Do the Right Thing, arguably his one true masterpiece. BlacKKKlansman is also simply one of the finest movies of 2018.