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 Witness

Witness (1985) 

Directed by Peter Weir 

Written by Earl W. Wallace, William Kelley 

Starring Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lukas Haas, Danny Glover 

Release Date February 8th, 1985 

Published February 8th 2015 

Directed by Peter Weir, “Witness” stars Harrison Ford as Detective John Book, a Philadelphia homicide cop who stumbles into a corrupt conspiracy. While investigating the death of an undercover narcotics officer, Book becomes the protector of an Amish woman, Rachel (Kelly McGillis), and her son, Samuel (Lukas Haas), who witnessed the murder and eventually identifies a police detective named McFee (Danny Glover) as the killer.

After informing his superior, Chief Schaeffer (Josef Sommer), Book discovers the dangerous depths of the conspiracy and takes Rachel and Samuel into hiding, back to their family in the Amish country. How will Book unfold the conspiracy and protect Rachel and her son while conforming to the Amish way of life as protection against the outside world? That is the dramatic crux of “Witness.”

What is striking about the performance of Harrison Ford in “Witness” is the lack of star polish. Ford is without pretense toward stardom, he see’s no need to command scenes and instead allows the scene to settle around him. Ford doesn’t appear until a full 15 minutes into the film, time spent establishing Rachel as a widow and setting up for the murder that will drive the plot.

Once Ford enters the picture his character is more of a force of workmanlike dedication to the law rather than the hard charging, charismatic detective types favored by big stars. There is nothing showy or demonstrative about Book, he’s a guy doing a job who happens to find himself in an uniquely dangerous situation; one with an unusual set of options that play out in a highly compelling fashion.

The scenes set among the Amish while Book is hiding out and forming a plan to fight back against his conspirators, are quiet and thoughtful and proceed with their own force of plot. Convention tells us that Book and Rachel will fall in love but the ways in which that bond forms seem organic rather than by the force of what’s expected of a movie. I love the chemistry between Ford and McGillis which is expressed almost entirely in looks and gestures.

30 years later “Witness” is a testimony to the true talent of Harrison Ford, his ability to become an everyman instead of a superhero. Before he descended into a caricature of a growling, grouchy, senior citizen action hero, Ford was a true everyman hero who happened to be clever in a pinch and capable of selfless sacrifice in pursuit of what was right. It’s what made his Jack Ryan such a great character, he wasn’t always prepared for what was about to happen, he was just capable and a little more daring than most.

That’s the charm of Harrison Ford and it is the charm of “Witness.” Other stars would have made each moment about them and how smart or tough they are. Ford gives himself over to the moment and in the character of John Book he immerses himself in what is happening while failing as anyone might to actually prepare for the bad things that are on the horizon because, truly, who could be prepared for such a thing.

“Witness” is available for streaming now on Netflix or for rent via Amazon Prime streaming.

Movie Review: Blindness

Blindness (2009) 

Directed by Fernando Meierelles

Written by Don McKellar

Starring Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, Alice Braga, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal

Release Date October 3rd, 2009 

Published October 10th, 2009 

Fernando Meierelles is an infinitely talented director whose features City of God and The Constant Gardener are breathtaking exercises in visual dynamism and urgent storytelling. It leaves one utterly baffled then to find Meirelles the director of Blindness; a dreary, sluggish horror story that features a plague nearly as curious as M. Night Shyamalan's evil oxygenating trees in The Happening.

Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo lead a diverse cast as a husband and wife. The husband is an opthamologist who is suddenly stricken blind. The previous day he had seen a patient who suffered the same affliction. Now the doctor is blind and so is his secretary and each of his patients. His wife however keeps her sight even as she joins her husband in a mass quarantine of people suddenly having been struck blind.

In the quarantine building, the blind are herded like cattle and kept like prisoners. The internal society starts off as expected, frightened but peaceful. Then chaos sets in. A despotic young man played by Diego Luna gets a hold of a weapon and takes the food hostage. He doles out rations in exchange for first jewelry and then sexual favors.

Meirelles observes these events with a bizarre distance, as if the chaos onscreen were an expression of his chaotic mindset. Even the director seems uncomfortable with the actions of his characters. This impression comes in the way Meirelles films the action through either too much darkness or too much light. If the director himself doesn't have the stomach for his action, how can he expect that of the audience?

This is the part of the review where I talk about the elements of the movie you might find most appealing beyond the premise and the technical creation that is the film. Unfortunately, Blindness is one of those rare movies where there really isn't anything appealing. Fernando Meirelles has crafted a thriller without thrills, a parable without underlying meaning. A sloppy, slow moving, dreary slog to a meaningless meandering ending.

What could I possibly recommend about that?

Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo are exceptionally talented people who no doubt were excited to work with a director of Meierelles' resume. That resume likely blinded them to the quality of Blindness, a mind numbing bore of a movie with less hope and exhilaration than even Eli Roth's lowest work. Rapes to murders to people defecating in the halls in service of a go nowhere plot, Blindness is a singularly horrific movie.

Movie Review Sorry to Bother You

Sorry to Bother You (2018) 

Directed by Boots Riley

Written by Boots Riley 

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

Release Date July 6th, 2018

Published July 6th, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Review Shooter

Shooter (2007) 

Directed by Antoine Fuqua 

Written by Jonathan Lemkin 

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Michael Pena, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Rhona Mitra

Release Date March 23rd, 2007 

Published March 23rd, 2007 

Mark Wahlberg is on the verge of major superstardom. Coming off his Oscar nominated performance in The Departed, Wahlberg is one major starring role away from that rarefied air of a 20 million dollar man. Unfortunately, his latest starring role, Shooter, is not the career transforming movie he was looking for. An abysmal mess of action movie cliches, Shooter is a step backward, in fact, for Wahlberg who delivers one of the least appealing performances of his career.

Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) is one of the best snipers in the world. As demonstrated early in the movie, he can take out a can of beef stew from a mile away. That is why security contractors led by Colonel Johnson (Danny Glover) turn to him to find out how an assassin might kill the President with a near impossible shot from more than a mile away.

Though not exactly keen on helping a President he has deep philosophical differences with, Bob casually reads the 9/11 report and talks of disdain for wars over oil; just to give you an idea of his political bent, Swagger agrees to help out. It turns out to be a fateful decision. The asassination happens despite Bob's help and in fact because of it, the men he is working for are the actual assassins and Bob it seems is their patsy.

Now he must team up with a rookie FBI agent, babyfaced Michael Pena, to take down the shady conspiracy. To do so, they will have to kill a whole heck of alot of people.

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, a master of style over substance filmmaking, Shooter has no real plot but rather plot hangers on which scenes of extreme violence are hung. On the bright side, much of that extreme violence is pretty cool looking. A siege on a farmhouse where Wahlberg and Pena kill some 20 or more nameless henchmen brings back fond goofball memories of Schwarzeneger's Commando and Stallone's Rambo.

Naturally, this being a throwback to action movies past there is eye candy in Shooter. Hot redhead Kate Mara, last seen in the underappreciated We Are Marshall, plays Wahlberg's love interest who by chance happens to spend much time in bondage wearing only a bra and jeans. And then there is smokin' babe Rhona Mitra, best known from TV's Nip/Tuck, who plays Pena's FBI partner who, though she keeps her clothes, models some lovely short skirts that I doubt are standard issue for an FBI agent.

Allegedly, when it comes to the action/thriller genre, we are supposed to accept plot holes and dumb luck that allow the lead character to escape certain capture or death. Shooter abuses the dumb luck in scenes so appallingly contrived that Jean Claude Van Damme would scoff. What luck that Swagger manages to steal a car that happens to have medical supplies in the truck right after he had been shot twice.

What luck that the one guy in the world without a television happens to be an expert in weapons who can help Swagger figure out who set him up. To ask for suspension of disbelief once or twice is cool, to keep asking over and over until all logic is abandoned in favor of utter contrivance is just too much.

Shooter compounds its goofball plot with a political perspective as ludicrous as any of the outsized action scenes in the film. Wahlberg's Bob Lee Swagger presents a pseudo-liberal political perspective that he defends with a gun. In a more self aware movie that could be played for ironic laughs, but Shooter is not a satire. The film wears a simplistic anti-war, anti-conservative perspective on its sleeve right down to showing Swagger casually reading the 9/11 report and chiding his enemies for their wars for oil.

Kudos to Mark Wahlberg and director Antoine Fuqua for wanting their film to be relevant but if they really want to get their point across; they need to do it in a smarter, more self aware movie. Shooter is a blood and guts, old school action picture. Attempting to shoehorn political commentary into the film only serves to make the politics seem as irrelevant as the film itself.

The most disappointing thing about Shooter is the thing that should have been its biggest strength. Star Mark Wahlberg. In one of the most unappealing performances of his career, Wahlberg mumbles his way through a charisma free performance. Handicapped by a script that gives him little more to do than shoot and grunt, Wahlberg brings very little life to this performance.

Mark Wahlberg is far too good an actor for such dopey material as Shooter. Brainless action crossed with mindless political cliche, Shooter feigns depth by appealing to a left wing mindset but insults that same left wing with its goofball liberalism defended with a big gun. It's true that Shooter has its heart in the right place; but when its purpose is so poorly expressed, the point is desperately missed.

Wahlberg will bounce back from this. Shooter may not launch him into the star territory of Tom Cruise, Will Smith or even Mel Gibson, but he's too talented not to make it there eventually. That is, if he can bypass idiot movies like Shooter.

Movie Review The Cookout

The Cookout (2004) 

Directed by Lance Rivera 

Written by Laurie B Turner, Jeffrey Brian Holmes 

Starring Queen Latifah, Jennifer Lewis, Storm P, Danny Glover, Ja Rule 

Release Date September 3rd, 2004 

Published September 4th, 2004 

Not being African-American myself it's difficult for me to complain about the way African-Americans are portrayed in the movies. Still I find the segmentation of black actors to be one of the most disturbing things about the movie business. It was something that crystallized with the release of the movie Soul Food in 1997. Hollywood took notice of that film’s breakout success and saw the potential of films with all black casts to make money only appealing to black people.

That's not an indictment of Soul Food, which did appeal to a number of people beyond African-Americans. It is the way that subsequent films of similar appeal have been so cynically made and marketed to African-Americans that I find disturbing. Hollywood marketers underestimating the savvy and intelligence of moviegoers began packaging cheap stereotypes and recycled clichés with all black casts in the hopes that the paucity of quality entertainment featuring African-Americans would draw in that segment of the audience. It is with that same cynicism that The Cookout reaches theaters.

Cobble together loose stereotypes under a banner of one big star (Queen Latifah) and just hope that at least black people will come and see it. The cynicism and dare I say racism that comes from that approach flows from the screen and what is supposed to be a comedy feels disturbing and uncomfortable to watch.

The film stars Storm P as basketball star Todd Henderson. Todd has just become the number one draft pick of the New Jersey Nets and is ready to celebrate. With his mother Emma (Jennifer Lewis) and dad JoJo (Frankie Faison), Todd is ready to throw a traditional Henderson family cookout at his brand new multi-million dollar pad. The place is perfect with a big backyard and Todd's expendable millions. This should be the best family cookout ever, but if it were that easy we wouldn't have a movie.

Todd has a new girlfriend Brittany (smokin hot Meagan Good) who complicates everything by getting on mom's nerves. Brittany was raised in the suburbs, obsessed with social climbing and has no idea what a cookout is all about. She does know how to spend Todd's money, on the decorating of the house, on fancy European chef's and expensive cars, and anything else that might drive Todd's mother crazy, especially since Todd and Brittany have no plans for marriage.

Todd's family is a collection of movie cliches so tired that they aren't worth mentioning other than to mention that Tim Meadows, Godfrey and Reg E. Cathey play various family members too dull to name. The supporting cast outside the family is actually quite good, especially Eve who plays Todd's childhood best friend who's grown a lot from the awkward girl he knew as a kid to challenge Brittany for his affection. Sadly, her part is very small.

The other good supporting role is that of the security guard played by Queen Latifah. Latifah is credited with writing the screenplay, which if true is mind blowing. Maybe she only wrote her part, which is by far the best thing in the film. Latifah gets all of the film’s big laughs, which are few and far between. The remaining supporting players are treated worse than the cliched family members, especially poor Danny Glover who sacrifices all dignity in a poorly written stereotype of a black man acting like an uptight white guy.

The less said about Ja Rule in the film’s unnecessary bad guy role the better. I would tell Ja to not quit his day job but his recent album sales leave him few options.

What Cookout really comes down to essentially are its two disparate lead performances by Storm P, real name Quaran Pender, and Jennifer Lewis. When I say disparate I mean they are two very different performances. Where Pender melts unnoticeable into the scenery while Lewis stands out and damn near makes this thing work with her sheer force of will. Lewis' role is an underwritten cliche, clipped together from pieces of other movies featuring domineering black mothers. Yet Lewis manages to make many of her scenes work. Were the film about her and not Storm P's character the movie might have had a chance.

Sadly, who am I kidding, this film never had a chance. Cookout is the cynical invention of a marketing department salivating at the opportunity to appeal to what they see as a reliable niche market. They aren't concerned with making good movies starring African-American casts, the studios simply want them cheap and fast with the thought that just having black people in starring roles is enough to draw small segmented audiences, just enough to make a little profit. Cynicism is bad enough but combined with racism as it is here it's disturbing.

Movie Review: The Royal Tenenbaums

Rushmore (2001) 

Directed by Wes Anderson

Written by Wes Anderson

Starring Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, Danny Glover, Owen Wilson

Release Date December 14th, 2001 

Published December 24th, 2001 

In Rushmore, Wes Anderson took two very unique characters and used them to establish an unusual comic tone of irony and pathos that, for all it's quirks, seemed grounded in a weird sort of realty. In The Royal Tenenbaums, he applies that same unusual tone to an awesome ensemble cast to an even greater effect.

The Royal Tenenbaums is the story of a family of geniuses and the father who was the catalyst for their self destruction. Gene Hackman plays the father, the aptly named Royal Tenenbaum, a disgraced and disbarred lawyer whose luck and money have run out, and who now seeks to reconcile with the family he destroyed years earlier; not out of any emotional need for forgiveness, but rather because he just needs a place to crash.

Angelica Huston is Royal's soon-to-be-ex-wife, Etheline, a genius in her own right who is about to marry a man named Henry, played by Danny Glover. Luke Wilson is Richie Tenenbaum, a tennis prodigy washed up after a breakdown in the middle of a major match. Gwyneth Paltrow is Margot Tenenbaum (whom Royal makes a point of noting is adopted,) a genius playwright who wrote her first play at age 11 and has written nothing since. Ben Stiller is Chas, a widower who was a financial whiz at age 9, whose resentment of Royal is just one of the family's many dysfunctional aspects.

Bill Murray and Owen Wilson round out the cast in truly funny supporting roles. The whole cast is sensational, and though Stiller seems a little off key at times, everyone maintains this wondrous magical tone that makes the movie hum; never too loud, never too soft. Combine that brilliant tone with Mark Mothersbaugh's inspired score and the soundtrack of 60's tunes like the Beatles' "Hey Jude," and you have what amounts to a comedic symphony. The New York setting is as strange and wonderful as the rest of the film and when combined with the soundtrack give the film a feeling of timelessness. 

I don't know if there is a director I have higher hopes for than I do for Wes Anderson. I cannot wait to see what he does next.