Movie Review: 2012

2012 (2009) 

Directed by Roland Emmerich 

Written by Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser 

Starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson

Release Date November 13th, 2009

Published November 12th, 2009 

2012 hysteria has gotten so out of hand that NASA was compelled to put out a press release stating that the Mayan Calendar does not predict the end of the world. Indeed, the planets will align in 2012 but they will as they have numerous times before without massive worldwide destruction. Could there be a better endorsement for the new goofball disaster flick 2012? This latest project from world destruction expert Roland Emmerich goes off the rails of reality from jumpstreet but knows it, accepts it, and even has a little fun being all earnest and serious about stuff blowin' up real good.

John Cusack leads an ensemble cast in 2012 as Jackson Curtis. A failed writer, Jackson drives a limousine for a living and that is how he arrives to take his two kids camping for the weekend. Jackson is estranged from his wife Kate (Amanda Peet) who has remarried to a plastic surgeon, Gordon (Thomas McCarthy).

Jackson is taking the kids camping at a rather odd moment. All over California giant cracks are forming. There are a number of mini-earthquakes and other ominous signs of doom that Jackson and family choose to ignore. Meanwhile, across the country a government geologist, Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has discovered that the end of the world is nigh.

The sun is firing off flares that become neutrinos that are heating the earth's core and blah, blah, blah, let's just say science is merely a touchstone for 2012 and leave it at that. The necessary info is that the world will soon end. What luck that there is a solution in place. Giant ships called Arcs will whisk the wealthy, privileged and connected of the world to safety on the high seas while the average folks die horribly.

Thanks to a wacked out, Art Bell wannabe, well played by Woody Harrelson doing a fabulous Dennis Hopper impression, ....Jackson.... finds out about the Arcs and aims to get his kids, ex-wife and even his romantic rival to ..Asia.. where the Arcs are being loaded up.

Basic set up, establish the stakes, establish our everyman hero and then rain down the CGI destruction. You have to give this to Roland Emmerich, the idea is efficient. If only the actual film were so cut to the quick. 2012, despite many guilty pleasures, lingers for nearly three hours blowing up monuments and killing dignitaries.

If you enjoy carnage and human sacrafice then you may marvel at watching priests crushed by the Sistine Chapel. The Pope gets crushed by the ....Vatican.... and the President of the ....United States....? He gets an aircraft carrier named for John F. Kennedy dropped on him.

Roland Emmerich really enjoys these scenes to much. Really, it's rather unseemly, the pleasure that Emmerich seems to take in staging these CGI deaths. It's comparable to the joys that a director like Eli Roth takes in torturing his average Jane characters, minus the misogyny but with a healthy dose of blasphemy.

It is that unseemly quality, along with the film's exorbitant length, that makes me resist liking 2012. And I really kinda want to. The CGI destruction is well crafted and even kind of exciting, especially watching a commuter plane fly between falling buildings.

John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor are shockingly effective in building human surrogates from the rubble of expository dialogue, running and screaming that are the main components of their characters. Amand Peet, Danny Glover and Thandie Newton round out a main cast right at home in a disaster movie ensemble. 

I kind of want to recommend 2012 because there is some real good camp and some terrific CGI. Unfortunately, the film overstays its welcome and becomes a little to blood lusty for my taste. The seemingly random fates of well known heads of state, and a few filler characters, leave a bad taste that I just cannot shake. 

2012 is a movie for the forgiving fan of big, dumb loud, world ending blockbusters only.

Movie Review Salt

Salt (2010) 

Directed by Phillip Noyce

Written by Kurt Wimmer

Starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Andre Braugher

Release Date July 23rd, 2010 

Published July 22nd, 2010 

Can a movie run on pure rocket fuel adrenalin? The answer is yes but only when your star has the astonishing star power of Angelina Jolie. “Salt,” directed by Phillip Noyce, begins with a jolt and after a few moments of exposition to set the stakes it sets off on a pace that makes “Fast and the Furious” look like “The Remains of the Day.”

Angelina Jolie is Evelyn Salt, a CIA Agent who is accused by a Russian defector (Daniel Olbrychski) of being a Russian sleeper agent tasked with killing the Russian President. Naturally, Salt claims she is being set up and just as naturally no one, aside from her partner Winters (Liev Schreiber) believes her.

Internal Affairs Agent Peabody (Chiwitel Ejiofor) certainly doesn't believe her and intends on detaining her but with her husband (August Diehl) having gone missing and the defector having escaped, Salt takes it on herself to escape to chase the baddie, find her husband and prevent the job she's allegedly been tasked with from taking place.

There is a great deal going on plot wise in “Salt“and not one iota of it matters in the least to the success of the film. “Salt” is a film that exists purely as propulsion. The action proceeds at a pace that distracts from the whacked plot and seems intended to do just that.

Director Phillip Noyce and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer have constructed a movie so convoluted that the entire film functions as a weird Rube Goldberg experiment that relies desperately on the next ludicrous yet intricately designed, rapid fire action scene. In one of the biggest and most outlandish scenes in the film Jolie leaps from one moving truck to another and then another all while being chased and shot at. The physics are laughable but if you treat it like the inside joke between filmmaker and audience that it may in fact be and you can really have some fun.

Angelina Jolie is both gorgeous and badass with just a touch of vulnerability. Those lips and that body draw you in and the rest keeps you riveted to the screen waiting to see what she will do next. “Salt” was initially written for a male protagonist and Tom Cruise was rumored for the lead. Seeing “Salt” on the big screen it's impossible to imagine anyone but Ms. Jolie, she owns this role with style, sex, charisma and an almost physical command of the screen.

Of course, if you pause for a moment and pull the plot apart it would crumble like a bad game of Jenga but like I said “Salt” has little time for a plot. “Salt” is a perpetual motion machine of gunfights, car chases, foot chases ,and Angelina Jolie's unstoppable charisma. Take it for what it is and ask for nothing more and you will be satisfied with “Salt.”

Movie Review Slow Burn

Slow Burn (2007) 

Directed by Wayne Beach 

Written by Wayne Beach 

Starring Ray Liotta, LL Cool J, Mekhi Phifer, Taye Diggs, Chiwetel Ejiofor 

Release Date April 13th, 2007

Published April 15th, 2007 

I have long been a believer in the auteur theory. The theory goes that the director is the author of the film and it is the director's vision above all others that makes a great film. This has bred within me a love of the writer-director, that rare breed of filmmaker who controls each of the most important aspects of the storytelling process.

Writer-directors, in my experience, make better films because the vision of the film belongs to them and them alone. But of course, just being a writer director does not make you a great storyteller. Case in point writer-director Wayne Beach the auteur behind the thriller Slow Burn. This convoluted mystery is the perfect example of a case where a director could have used a trained screenwriter to clean up some of the more goof ball aspects of an otherwise well directed movie.

Cole Ford (Ray Liotta) has risen through the ranks of the District Attorney's office at record pace. Not long ago he was a homicide detective taking night classes to become a lawyer. Now as DA he has his eye on the Mayor's office and his rags to riches political story has him profiled by a Vanity Fair reporter, Ty Trippin (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

However, Ford's rise to the top looks to come to a crashing end when his top gang crimes prosecutor, Nora Timmer (Jolene Blalock), murders a man in her home. She claims the man, Isaac (Mekhi Pfifer) was stalking her and had attempted to rape her when she shot him. Her story however, is full of holes, mostly poked by an informant, Luther Pinks (LL Cool J), who knows far more than he should.

Turning from the prosecutor to the informant, Cole finds two different stories of murder emerging. Each of the stories links back to a major drug dealer and some kind of event that will take place at 5 Am, some 5 hours from the moment of the murder.

Written and Directed by Wayne Beach, Slow Burn is a stylishly rendered attempt at modern noir. Unfortunately, the script is far too convoluted and utterly ludicrous to be taken seriously. Beach sets up a story of race and politics that has some potential, if he were Spike Lee. Wayne Beach is no Spike Lee and thus his racial material doesn't get much deeper than one allegedly interracial romance.

The racial aspect of Slow Burn is strange because it is so shallow and yet so intricately woven into the story. Jolene Blalock's Nora character passes for black but may in fact be white. The psychology of why she felt the need to pass for black, or vice versa, should have been worth exploring. However, Beach doesn't have any insight into this character.

It doesn't help that Blalock, though strikingly beautiful, is a cypher. Not believable as a strong black woman or as a woman trying to be black, Blalock's performance is wooden and predictable. Her performance is in fact so weak it is fair to wonder if Beach was forced to skim her character in order to avoid her performance. That would explain the lack of depth and how the story is hamstrung by lack of insight.

Of course, it could just be that Beach didn't have much beyond his neo-noir pretension to begin with.

You have to respect the commitment of Ray Liotta. He has made a number of pretty bad movies over the years but each performance is committed and even believable. Liotta has no second gear; he goes at each role for boredom and believes in each character he plays no matter how bizarre everything around him may be. As Slow Burn clumsily ambles to its predictable conclusion, Liotta is often affecting and believable. Sadly, the story, and his co-stars are far too inferior for Liotta to rescue.

LL Cool J certainly seems to be having fun playing a character who may as well have been called Red Herring. His character evolves to fit whatever odd shift in logic the story takes as if his character were being rewritten on the spot so he could deliver whatever necessary expository dialogue needed to make sense of this convoluted mystery. At Least he's having fun; just listen to him deliver such goofball lines as "She smelled like potatoes and every man wanted to be the gravy".

LL has a number of lines like that, "She smelled like an orange, ready to be peeled", and he delivers each with a voice that seems just about to burst into laughter.

There is a large kitsch factor on Slow Burn. Both LL Cool J and Jolene Blalock deliver performances that are laughable to the point of turning the film into a campy unintentional comedy. The script is bad enough with its half baked plot strands and predictable ending. Throw in LL Cool J and Jolene Blalock's performances and the kitsch factor nearly makes Slow Burn so bad it's good.

Okay, maybe not so good; but entertaining in ways that I'm sure writer-director Wayne Beach never intended.

Movie Review: Children of Men

Children of Men (2006) 

Directed by Alfonso Cuaron

Written by Alfonso Cuaron

Starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam

Release Date December 25th, 2006

Published December 24th, 2006

Alfonso Cuaron has said that his latest film, the futuristic thriller Children Of Men, is an allegory to our times. A warning of problems to come if we continue on our current path. The film alludes to ideas about immigration policy, war in the middle east, terrorism and death with dignity. These ideas are introduced but none are given great weight. It's as if just mentioning these hot button issues is enough to bring importance to a movie that is otherwise a chase thriller with an interesting premise.

The fact is,Children Of Men is not about its story or characters. Children Of Men is about director Alfonso Cuaron and his ability as a director. Using long, unbroken takes and some dazzling cinematography, Cuaron impresses with style and technique but does so at the expense of his story.

In 2027 woman haven't given birth in nearly 20 years. The world's youngest person, an 18 year old, has been killed and chaos reigns throughout the world. England is the last hold out of civil order, though the chaos is banging at the door. Immigrants from around the world have attempted to immigrate causing the government to round up foreigners and place them in camps. Those who fight are killed, those who don't are sent back to the chaos and famine of their home countries.

In the midst of the tumultuous times a former activist named Theo (Clive Owen) is slowly drinking himself to death. Having lost his own baby son more than a decade and a half ago, as well as his wife, Theo has given up. His ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore) has not. Now the leader of an insurgency, Julian has come to the aid of an immigrant teenager, Kee (Claire Hope Ashitay) who holds the future of humanity.

Kee is; by some miracle, pregnant and Julian knows she can't protect her. Turning to Theo for help, she leaves it to him to take Kee to a utopian group of scientists and thinkers called the human project where it's hoped her pregnancy can reveal the key to saving humanity.

That is what I could make of the plot of Children of Men, a movie that is more style than substance. Director Alfonso Cuaron claims the film is an allegory to modern times however, his metaphors are shallow and underserved. This alarmist tale of government oppression and societal crumbling has a dark vision of the future that is supposed to be a warning of things to come and a comment on how things currently are but it fails to be convincing in either metaphoric conceit.

Children of Men is not an allegory, it is rather a movie about how the action is filmed and not why the action is taking place. Working with super long takes, Cuaron uses his camera in unbroken scenes that traverse big action movie chases and war scenes without a single edit. It's an impressive technical achievement. It's also an extraordinarily showy exercise. Like a dog begging for attention, the filmmaking tricks of Children of Men sit up, beg and roll over.

The worst thing about Children of Men is how cheap and manipulative the plot is. Of course, all movies are manipulative. However, the best movies allow you to suspend disbelief and forget you are being manipulated. Children of Men uses a cheap screenwriting trick, the child in danger plot, to manipulate audiences into feeling tension that the adult characters and the plot they are trapped in cannot.

I will grant you that much of the technological trickery employed by Alfonso Cuaron is so good that you can forgive much of the very shallow plot. The extended, unedited takes are compelling visuals that you can't help but marvel at. Also, I was surprised how visually impressive the film is without Cuaron's usual flourishes of color. In his Great Expectations, Y Tu Mama Tambien and Harry Potter, Cuaron's visuals overflowed with color. Children of Men goes in the opposite direction, desaturating the screen leaving a gray, light green hue that is as effective as his use of bright colors in previous films.

The color palette matches the mood of the film. Gloomy and oppressive and while that doesn't sound appealing, in execution and as part of this story, the color palette is visually engaging.

Another appealing element of Children of Men is the star performance of Clive Owen. No actor embodies weariness the way Owen does. Look at his roles in I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, Closer and Sin City, no actor looks more tired or beaten up by the world as Owen. His gloom ridden role in Children of Men was made just for him.

The character of Theo has lost everything when we meet him. He can barely muster the energy to not give a damn. Watching him come back to life as he helps Kee escape is appealing for the way Owen plays it, even if the rest of the movie is not interested in character development. Owen and the rest of the cast of Children of Men were on their own trying to bring their characters some life while Alfonso Cuaron focused on unique ways to shoot them.

Children of Men is a technical marvel. Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki dazzle us with camera work, lighting, settings and chases and the films centerpiece, long unbroken takes. Dazzled we are but the technical brilliance can't disguise a shallow thriller plot clothed in faux importance. Saying your movie is important in metaphor is one thing, actually being important is another.

Movie Review: American Gangster

American Gangster (2007) 

Directed by Ridley Scott 

Written by Steven Zaillian 

Starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Clarence Williams III, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding Jr 

Release Date November 2nd, 2007 

Published November 1st, 2007

The story of Frank Lucas could have found this enterprising, intelligent man as CEO of a fortune 500 company. The man knew how to run a business. He was a retail pioneer at heart who figured a way to cut out the middle man and bring his product directly from the manufacturer, no middle man. He sounds like an electronics dealer with his own chain of wholesale retailers.

The reality, captured in fictional form, in American Gangster is that Frank Lucas was a drug dealer and a murderer who coldly and heartlessly killed hundreds with his product and more with his own gun.

As the driver for legendary Harlem gangster Bumpy Johnson (Clarence Williams III) Frank Lucas learned the business of being a gangster up close and personal. When Bumpy died the city fell into a chaos of crime and violence and Frank Lucas longed to bring back Bumpy's sense of order and profit from it as he did.

Finding a way to get heroin without having to share with the mob and the NYPD, Frank went all the way to Vietnam to get his product which was then smuggled into the country in the coffins of US soldiers returning from the war. The result was a more pure and addictive form of heroin that Frank nicknamed Blue Magic. With his product in place Frank brought his brothers up from North Carolina and the Lucas empire was born.

Unraveling the tangled web of the Lucas drug trade is Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe). A lone good cop in department overflowing with corruption, Richie never took a dime, even when he and his partner stumbled on a million dollars of easily stealable drug money. It's good that Richie has his professional integrity because he has little else. His wife is leaving him and taking his son while his personal life consists of a series of mindless one night stands.

The collision of Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts was inevitable how it arrives and plays out in American Gangster is entirely unpredictable if you haven't already investigated the rise and fall of Frank Lucas. Indeed, Frank was for real. His reign in Harlem lasted nearly a decade. He once had more than 150 million dollars in cash stored in his home. He also murdered enemies in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses and was not caught.

Richie Roberts was also for real and the the path of his life through this film is fascinating and the prologue hints that even after getting Frank Lucas his life was colorful and unique. As played by Russell Crowe, Richie Roberts almost steals the picture. Crowe's Richie isn't your typical meatheaded tough guy roughing up suspects to get the information he needs to get the bad guy. Richie was a law student and eventually a prosecutor. He was a thinking man's detective even as he put forth a tough guy front.

This character could not be better suited to Russell Crowe who has played Nobel prize winner John Nash and fictional Gladiator Maximus, each to Oscar level. Don't be surprised if his Richie Roberts gets called on the morning of the Oscar nominations.

There was recently quite a heated debate at MovieCityNews.com over director Ridley Scott. A writer for the site wrote that he felt Scott is overrated as a director. He cited his examples and made some strong points about Scott's resume, which I agree, is somewhat inflated. However, after watching American Gangster I am convinced that Scott is an auteur of the highest order.

Fighting for two years to get American Gangster on the screen, Scott battled studio heads to get his vision of the film as the final product and he succeeded. This is top notch work that plays to Scott's strengths as a director of epics like Gladiator and Alien. Say what you will about Scott's many failings, his American Gangster is a modern film classic.

American Gangster can fairly be called Ridley Scott's Godfather. It is the height of his work thus far and it reflects everything he has accomplished including his earning the loyalty and trust of two of the finest actors of this generation. If Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington love Ridley Scott that's gotta mean he's doing something right.

Denzel Washington remains the king of cool in Hollywood. No one could have played the role of Frank Lucas like Denzel does. The charisma, the elegance, the cold steely intelligence rolls off the screen in waves when Denzel is on camera. His work is so effortless I worry that people will call the performance lazy. There is none of the histrionics of his Oscar winning performance in Training Day , none of the harrumphing bravado that announces a big dramatic performance.

The menace and charm are all played in Denzel's eyes. In fact, much of Denzel's Frank Lucas is in his eyes. There are scenes where that steely gaze could kill whoever it falls upon. There are other scenes, ones with his mother played by Ruby Dee and his wife (Lymari Nadal), where those eyes are as soft and inviting as Denzel in The Preacher's Wife. The entire dichotomy that is Frank Lucas can be found in Denzel's electric gaze.

That is the extraordinary talent of Denzel Washington on display in American Gangster, he makes it look so easy even as he has so much going on. Some will no doubt walk away feeling like they have seen this Denzel before. Cocky and harsh but still charismatic and even charming, there are so many levels to Denzel's performance and he plays them so well that it barely registers until after you've had time to think about, after the performance has already worked on you.

Two extraordinary actors under the direction of a director at the height of his powers creates one hell of a filmgoing experience. American Gangster is the kind of epic filmmaking that so rarely lives up to its ambitions. American Gangster more than lives up to its grand ambitions. A true powerhouse of dramatic filmmaking, American Gangster is a must see for all audiences, but especially those that want to see the movie that will be featured on Oscar night come March.

Movie Review Inside Man

Inside Man (2006) 

Directed by Spike Lee 

Written by Russell Gewirtz

Starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer

Release Date March 24th, 2006 

Published March 23rd, 2006 

Spike Lee is unquestionably my favorite director and, in my opinion, the finest filmmaker working today. His films focus on important topics--sometimes directly, sometimes esoterically. His latest film, however, is not his usual timely topical drama. In Inside Man Spike Lee crafts his first mainstream thriller and despite its lack of relevance, Inside Man is Spike Lee at his usually crafty and skillful best.

On a typical day in New York City an indistinct truck from a painting company pulls up in front of First Manhattan Bank. A group of people in masks jump out, gather their equipment and head inside the bank. We already know they are not here to paint anything. These 'painters' are part of what we are told is the 'the perfect bank robbery.'

Clive Owen stars as Dalton Russell. He is the leader of this group of bank robbers in the new thriller Inside Man and he is the only robber we will get to know throughout the film. His accomplices are innumerable and so well hidden you will have a hard time keeping track of how many of them there are. One or two of them strip off the painting gear and mingle with the crowd and because their looks are so indistinct, they easily slip into the crowd of bank customers who are now hostages.

Opposite Russell and his cohorts is a clever detective and hostage negotiator named Keith Frazier, played by Denzel Washington. In a few quick, establishing scenes we find that Detective Frazier is under investigation by internal affairs over some missing money in a drug case. Thus, why he and his partner, played by the excellent Chiwetel Ejiofor, are not the boss's first choice to take over the hostage situation now unfolding at First Manhattan Bank. Add to that the fact that this will be their first hostage negotiation as the lead detectives, and you can understand why the department is nervous.

Finally, there is one more angle to play out in the elaborate and clever plot of Inside Man. This one involves a woman of mysterious political influence, Madeline White, played by Jodie Foster. Her job is to help high-profile millionaires keep hidden deep, dark and destructive secrets. Her new client? The owner of First Manhattan Bank Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer).

Now aware that his bank is being robbed, Mr. Case is deathly concerned about something he has hidden in a safe deposit box in the bank. He knows Madeline only by reputation. She fixes big problems by any means necessary and seems to have no moral hang ups. By the time the story plays out she will have used her considerable influence to get a face to face meeting with the bank robber Dalton Russell and live to tell about it.

Directed by Spike Lee, Inside Man does not reinvent the wheel in terms of suspense or the heist genre. What it does is take the familiar elements of the genre and simply do them better than other similar films. Working from a clever, but not exactly groundbreaking, script by first-time screenwriter Russell Gewirtz, Lee directs his first straight-edge thriller with little or no direct social commentary, his usual milieu.

The trick Spike Lee pulls off in Inside Man is bringing his considerable talent and intelligence cache to bear on a very familiar plot and genre. The film works because Spike Lee is a very talented director who knows how to build tension and suspense with his camera and by allowing his talented cast to do what they do without the interference of typical plot points.

Yes, those typical plot points, the negotiation, the red herrings, et al, are still there but the actors are not required to play to those elements. Rather they play around them allowing us to bring our own experience with this type of film into our understanding of the plot. Listen to the actors casually reference other so called heist pictures. Consider those mentions as signposts reminding us in the audience we are watching a heist picture. Meanwhile the actors play to the beat of their characters which gain depth and complexity with each passing scene.

Inside Man is a brilliantly constructed thriller patched together by arguably the best director working today. It serves not only as a wildly entertaining genre film, but also a reminder of Spike Lee's talent, which has gone atrociously underappreciated in recent years as films as disparate and exceptional as Bamboozled, She Hate Me and 25th Hour have come and gone with little notice. Watch Inside Man and remember, Spike Lee is still a genius.

Many indie artists have talked about the few mainstream compromises they must make to finance more relevant projects. The dichotomy comes down to one for the suits at the studio and then one for me. Until his recent box-office struggles, Spike Lee never had to make such a compromise. If Inside Man is the kind of studio compromise that Spike Lee must make to get his more relevant features made, then bring on the compromise.

Lee's skill with the thriller genre more than rivals his skill with social commentary.

The Lion King (2019)

The Lion King (2019) 

Directed by Jon Favreau 

Written by Jeff Nathanson 

Starring Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alfre Woodard, Billy Eichner 

Release Date July 19th, 2019 

Published July 18th, 2019 

The Lion King 2019 is an incredibly emotional and moving film. Putting aside the comparisons to the animated original, this version of the story is exceptionally well told. Director Jon Favreau has brilliantly captured this Shakespearean tale for the whole family with epic music and resonant themes and given it a modern flavor via a remarkable voice cast who elevate the material with their inventive riffing and gorgeous singing. 

You likely already know this story, Mufasa (James Earl Jones) is the King of The Pridelands. He and his beloved Sarabi (Alfre Woodard) have just had a son who will one day himself become the King. Simba, voiced as a cub by J.D McCrary, is a curious young lion who easily finds trouble but with the wisdom of his father, he will one day make a fine King. Unfortunately, Simba’s uncle,  Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has other plans. 

Scar seeks the throne and will use any nefarious means necessary to get there. Scar’s first attempt to get rid of young Simba sends the young lion and his friend, Nala (Shahadi Wright Joseph), into an elephant graveyard where hyenas reign. Simba and Nala are rescued by Mufasa but Scar seizes the opportunity to convince the hyenas to become his very own army. It will be the hyenas who lead to the death of Mufasa while he tries to protect Simba. 

Mufasa dies and Scar runs off Simba by accusing him of causing his father’s death. Scar also sends hyenas to kill Simba but the young lion manages to escape into the desert. Here, Simba begins a new life. With the help of Timon (Billy Eicher) and Pumba (Seth Rogen), Simba is able to leave his grief and shame behind and grow into a mature lion without the strictures of royalty and duty while nursing the scars of his past. 

Nala voiced by Beyonce as a mature lioness, eventually finds Simba is still alive and you know where the story is headed from there. The key to this telling of the story of The Lion King is how we get to the ending and in getting there we have a remarkably rich and fulfilling journey. The story of The Lion King 2019 is told with music and the music of this version of The Lion King is superb. I won’t be hyperbolic and declare that the music here is superior to the original, I will only say that I preferred the ways in which Hans Zimmer and Beyonce, among others, have updated this score and the original songs. 

The changes are seemingly minimal but they make a huge difference in how you accept The Lion King 2019. For instance, the Can You Feel the Love Tonight segment. In the 1994 version of The Lion King the scene is suitably romantic and filled with heartfelt emotion though it is slightly shorter than the new version. The slightly longer version here takes full advantage of this new style of The Lion King with Caleb Deschanel's rich and glorious cinematography underlining the romance and deepening the impact of the moment. 

It also helps to have Beyonce and Donald Glover not just as the singing voices of Nala and Simba, but their speaking voices as well. The jarring shift from one vocal style to the other isn’t damning in the original, just notable. Here however, the seamless shift singing to speaking adds a little more verisimilitude. That and, of course, we are talking about Beyonce whose voice is transcendent. That’s not a dig at Sally Dworsky who is a Broadway veteran of immense talent, it’s merely that Beyonce is a global superstar whose voice connects to audiences in an epic fashion that fits the grandiosity of this CGI approximation of live action. 

Donald Glover is also incredible but in a unique and different way. Glover’s voice acting in the song is superior to the original because he is singing in character and accounting for the fear and angst of Simba in a way that perhaps Joseph Williams cannot because the character is not fully his. He’s more focused on singing the song,Glover is singing the character and I found the difference to be notable. 

Another notable improvement for me over the original was the performance of the song Hakuna Matata which benefits from the unique and recognizable voices and personas of Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen. Neither is well known for their singing but the way they perform this song feels as fresh and even more alive than the original. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella but they are notably stage-bound in their energy, limited by the animation style. 

Eichner and Rogen meanwhile had the advantage of working in the CG realm and director Jon Favreau’s ability to allow them to explore a little and riff within the music. Eichner and Rogen have talked in interviews about how they were allowed to improvise their dialogue and even improvise in their songs and that playfulness is part of what makes this take on The Lion King so lively as opposed to the original. 

The best change however, from the original movie is the song Be Prepared. Performed here by Chiwetel Ejiofor, the song is transformed from a pop ditty talk sung through a thick English accent by Jeremy Irons, to an operatic dirge that is shortened to more specifically state Scar’s nefariousness. Where the original overstayed its welcome and tried to fit the pop nature of the rest of the soundtrack, this version of Be Prepared better serves the character of Scar while also cutting to the chase on Scar’s story. 

Is there a calculated cynicism driving Disney to remake their animated catalog in live action and CGI? Yes, it's unquestionably a mercenary effort. That said, the artists who have contributed to this version of The Lion King have transcended how The Lion King 2019 came to exist by delivering a resonant and lovely take on this grand material. They have brought the music into a modern context and stayed true to the remarkable themes of the original story and delivered a compelling, humorous romantic and touching film.