Movie Review Leap

Leap (2017) 

Directed by Eric Summer, Eric Wann 

Written by Eric Summer, Laurent Zeitoun, Carole Noble 

Starring Elle Fanning, Nat Wolff, Maddie Ziegler, Carly Rae Jepsen

Release Date February 24th, 2017 

Published February 25th, 2017 

It’s bizarre to me at times the things we feel are alright simply because they are animated. Take for instance the new animated family movie Leap which, while it tells a lovely story of an aspiring ballerina, spends a portion of its third act following a crazy woman as she attempts to murder two orphan children. Now, I get it, they’re animated but the choice made here is so incredibly forced and horrible that it doesn’t feel like Elmer Fudd’s failed attempts to murder Bug Bunny but something far more grim, ugly and worst of all, unnecessary.

Leap tells the story of Felicie (voiced by Elle Fanning) and her friend Victor (voiced by Nat Wolff) who escape from an orphanage on the outskirts of France and head to Paris to achieve their dreams. While Victor dreams inventing a way to fly, Felicie dreams of being a dancer and her dream is what drives the plot as she quite literally stumbles her way into the most prestigious dance company in Paris. There she meets Odette (voiced by Carly Rae Jepsen) who becomes her mentor and mother figure.

After Felicie nabs an invitation to attend the famed dance company from a talented but bratty rival (voiced by Maddie Ziegler) she begins attending classes while Odette begins to train her in secret. Odette used to be a dancer herself and in one of the film’s many abandoned plot strands, her background as a famed dancer is barely mentioned before it is pushed aside. Eventually, Felicie’s ruse is uncovered by the evil mother of her bratty rival (voiced in typically over the top manner by SNL star Kate McKinnon), and Felicie must fight for her chance to remain in class and in competition for the lead role in a major production or end up being sent back to the orphanage.

There are lovely moments in Leap but for each lovely moment there is a head-scratchingly awful moment such as a montage of Victor regaling Felicie with his own Paris adventure which he describes as triumph while we suffer/watch footage of him stumbling, falling and at one point lighting farts. Yes, this lovely movie about a young girl dreaming of life in the ballet contains a scene where a young boy lights his fart. Because, apparently, Hollywood hates your children

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Super 8

Super 8 (2011) 

Directed by J.J Abrams

Written by J.J Abrams

Starring Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Ron Eldard, Noah Emmerich 

Release Date June 10th, 2011

Published June 9th, 2011 

The combined imaginations of Steven Speilberg and J.J Abrams come together to create "Super 8" and it's a glorious combination. With Speilberg's childlike wonder and Abrams's taste in movie monsters, Super 8 is a nostalgic feast for those whose inner child carries fond memories of E.T, The Goonies, Stand by Me or any of the best of the cheesy, late night sci-fi movies of the 1950's.

Let's Make a Movie

In a Walt Disney-esque opening we see 12 year old Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) just after his mother has been killed. Joe is left in the care of his distant but protective father Jack (Kyle Chandler) while turning to his young friends for what modest comfort he can find. Part of his comfort is the distraction of making a movie.

Joe along with his visionary director pal Charles (Riley Griffiths), Martin (Gabriel Basso), Preston (Zach Mills) and Cary (Ryan Lee), are making a zombie on Charles's parent Super 8 camera. Charles has also recruited 14 year old Alice (Elle Fanning) to be his lead actress. Alice's father Louis (Ron Eldard) happens to have an unfortunate connection to Joe's mother.

On a late night on train station platform just outside of town the kids are filming a scene when a train rumbles through. As eager Charles sets up to get a shot of the train for the movie, Joe spots something unusual coming from the opposite direction, a truck has jumped onto the tracks and is driving right at the train.

Part Speilberg, Part Abrams

I will leave the rest of "Super 8" for you to discover, my plot description gets you through the first 10 minutes or so, right up until the spectacular train crash that will leave your jaw on the floor. Director J.J Abrams really loves the crashing of metal on metal and once the kids race to safety amidst the flying debris you will need a moment to catch your breath.

You won't have much time for breath catching however as director J.J Abrams delivers thrilling excitement at a brisk pace throughout. Super 8 is a fascinating mix of J.J Abrams taste for action and Steven Speilberg's childlike wonder. The film is equal parts "Cloverfield," which Abrams produced, and "E.T" and part "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" with a dash of the TV mystery "Lost."

Edge of Your Seat Excitement

Therein lies the only problem I foresee for Super 8 in finding audience; it's difficult to say what audience it's aimed at. Little kids, those under 12 will too frightened by Abrams's taste in alien movie scares while teenagers won't want to go to any movie that appeals to the nostalgia of mom and dad as Super 8 very much does.

Pushing aside the box office and marketing stuff, "Super 8" is quite simply a terrific movie. It has humor, suspense, action and scares in classically Speilberg fashion crafted with the modern imagination of J.J Abrams. "Super 8" is very much in the spirit of classic 50's sci fi movies which reminds me of my favorite line about classic sci fi, one that really applies to "Super 8," buy a ticket for a whole seat but you will only need 'THE EDGE!

Movie Review Somewhere

Somewhere (2010) 

Directed by Sophia Coppola 

Written by Sophia Coppola 

Starring Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning

Release Date December 22nd, 2010 

Published December 18th, 2010 

A dejected movie star drives his car in circles for a 2 or 3 minutes to begin Sophia Coppola's “Somewhere” and things only grow more elegiac and confounding from there. Stephen Dorff stars in “Somewhere” as movie star Johnny Marco and for the first 20 minutes of the film he is a most irritating and off-putting presence. After the driving in circles we are treated to a scene of the despondent star in his posh Chateau Marmont apartment being entertained by twin strippers before he simply falls asleep watching them.

The scene is noisy and goes on and on and on with Marco never leaving the bed and the girls never leaving their poles until the end and only then to offer a kiss goodbye to the sleeping star. These scenes will test the patience of even the most forgiving fan of writer-director Sophia Coppola and yet as you stick with “Somewhere” something strange begins to happen. A strange fascination arises even as Johnny Marco barely rouses from his stupor.

Conventionally, the story kicks in when Johnny's pre-teen daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) arrives for a visit. At first she is just a visitor and Johnny is welcoming but with an eye on the clock. After another interlude with the twins, Cleo returns, this time with plans to stay for a while longer. In a more typical story Johnny would be the diva father who learns how to be a better dad through the course of an adventure with his daughter. That however, is not this movie.

Sophia Coppola takes this story in a unique and fascinating direction by seeming to give it no direction at all. Somewhere has a hazy, dreamy feel and it builds fascination by avoiding the typical movie narrative expectations and instead allowing “Somewhere” to unfold in a mercurial fashion that feels natural even as nothing seems to be happening.

It's a daring approach as scenes begin with the chance that something might happen to break the dreamy monotony of this story and then the scene plays out and the dream continues. The ending is near perfection as it plays out in a way that fits the shapeless, prosaic nature of all that came before it. The ending is ambiguous and unusual and leaves the viewer wanting to know more and yet ready to leave Johnny Marco be.

”Somewhere” is one of the most divisive films of 2010. Many will walk out in the first 20 minutes; many will make it to the end and be left agape. But for those who find this film's groove and feel its vibe, “Somewhere” is a real trip, a memorable unendingly fascinating mind wipe that drifts away like fog lifting from your psyche. I hated “Somewhere” for a solid 20 minutes and by the end I loved it. If you can find the groove, you will love this movie too.

Movie Review: The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees (2008) 

Director Gina Prince Blythewood 

Written by Gina Prince Blythewood 

Starring Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys Jennifer Russell, Sophie Okenedo, Paul Bettany

Release Date October 17th, 2008

Published October 16th, 2008 

The Secret Life of Bees is one of the most manipulative movies ever made. It takes lovable little Dakota Fanning, she of the apple cheeks and blond curls, and has her utter lines about being unlovable and never knowing her mom. Then, she is given a picture of her late, dead, mother holding her when she is a baby.

If you can get through these scenes without bawling like a baby you are a better man than me. Yes, The Secret Life of Bees is Machiavellian in it's pushy way but my heart did ache for this little girl and yes, I did cry. In an early 1960's I'm sure of someone's memory, if not exactly the collective historical memory, a little girl named Lily (Dakota Fanning) is running away from her bullying father (Paul Bettany). With her caretaker Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) in tow, Lilly makes her way to a small town in South Carolina where a memory of her mother exists.

A scrap of paper with a black Mother Mary on it leads Lilly and Rosaleen to a bright pink house where three sisters, August (Queen Latifah), June (Alicia Keyes) and May (Sophie Okenedo), live in a bright  make a very good living cultivating and selling honey. Lilly's mother indeed has a lingering presence here and though she tries to be a stranger, August knows the little girl isn't here by accident. Running parallel to Lilly's journey are the racial politics of the early 1960's. June spends her time registering voters while Rosaleen is beaten up for trying to register.

The racial politics get only a blush, the focus of director Gina Prince Blythewood's story remains focused on Lilly and her journey toward accepting her tragic past and the role of her mother in her life all too briefly. In sticking to this story, Blythewood is blessed with Fanning's winning innocence and Queen Latifah's comforting motherly presence. The scenes between Latifah and Fanning are charged with joy and sadness and love that permeates the whole production of The Secret Life of Bees. The film radiates warmth and good feelings, pausing only briefly to acknowledge the ugliness of the time period.

Many will fault The Secret Life Of Bees for not taking more care to describe the challenges of the timeperiod. Many of those criticisms will likely fall on the character of May played by Sophie Okenedo. Her character provides shorthand for dealing with the sadness of the times. It's a cheat, there is no denying it, but I willingly looked past it toward what is very good about The Secret Life of Bees because what is good, is often very good. 

And that good comes from Latifah and Fanning whose warm glow engulfs the audience and allows them and us to forget about all of the ugliness in the world, then and now, for just a little while. Yes, the moments are manipulative but they are manipulative in ways that work. I cried. I never cry. That tells me all I need to know about the effectiveness of The Secret Life of Bees.

Movie Review: The Nines

The Nines (2007) 

Directed by John August 

Written by John August 

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Hope Davis, Melissa McCarthy, Elle Fanning 

Release Date August 31st, 2007

Published November 14th, 2007 

Gary (Ryan Reynolds) is an actor on a big time cop show and he has just hit rock bottom. After his girlfriend left him he decided to burn all of her things in the back yard. He ended up burning down his house. While the house burned Gary hit the streets and bought some crack and shared it with a prostitute in a fleabag hotel. When the cops caught up to him he was on the phone with 911 operators asking why he didn't have a belly button. This being Hollywood however, Gary's criminal meltdown was more like a minor PR problem. Sentenced to 30 days of home arrest, Gary's publicist Margaret (Melissa McCarthy) has set him up in the house of a friend of hers, a writer, out of town writing a pilot.

Soon Gary strikes up a friendship with his next door neighbor, Sarah (Hope Davis), a bored housewife and fan of Gary's. She listens to his odd ramblings about the house being haunted and eventually she even seems to believe him and offers evidence of a conspiracy to confine him to the haunted house. Is she just as crazy as Gary or is there more going on? Meanwhile, there is the writer whose house Gary is borrowing. His name is Gavin, also played by Reynolds, and he has just signed on for a reality TV show that documents the behind the scenes happenings on the new show he hopes to put on the fall schedule. 

The show stars Melissa McCarthy as a mother to an oddly prescient, mute child played by Elle Fanning. Gavin's liason at the network is Susan (Hope Davis). Is this an alternate reality? It must be if Gary is Gavin and Margaret is Melissa and so on but then how is the actor aware of the writers reality as if it were happening at the same time and how does Gavin know that some actor was staying in his home while he was gone.

It gets weirder folks as one more reality emerges, that of the characters on Gavin's TV show where Gabriel is the husband of Mary, McCarthy's character. This time Sara/Susan is Sierra some force of evil who attempts to lead Gabriel away from his family. Or is the real dimension and what Sierra tells Gabriel about humans and his real self are true? Bizarre, cryptic and oddly fashioned, The Nines never plays out as you think it might and that is what makes it so fascinating. Unpredictable in the strangest ways, this film from writer-director John August, who wrote the multi-narrative feature Go for director Doug Liman, is a serious mind-fuck that will keep you guessing throughout.

Ryan Reynolds is better known as a comic actor but when he wants to he can bring it dramatically. He definitely brings it in The Nines delivering three distinct and captivating characters. Melissa McCarthy has the unique challenge of playing herself for a segment and brings the challenges of a working actress in Hollywood to light in just the briefest of roles. She is less interesting in the other two realities but effective enough to maintain the film's strange charms. As for Hope Davis, you keep waiting to get more from her and she recedes. There is no doubt that this is Ryan Reynolds' vehicle but a little more for Davis and The Nines could go from recommendable to must see.

As it is The Nines is a strangely fascinating sci fi trip. Ryan Reynolds is one of the more engaging young actors working today and he proves it with not one but three excellent performances in The Nines.