Movie Review Haunted Mansion

Haunted Mansion (2023) 

Directed by Justin Simien 

Written by Katie Dippold 

Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny Devito, Chase W. Dillon, Jared Leto, Jamie Lee Curtis 

Release Date July 28th, 2023 

Published July 31st, 2023 

There is a lovely idea at the heart of Haunted Mansion that gets lost among the muck of trying to make a wide appeal blockbuster family movie. At the core of Haunted Mansion, director Justin Simien, creator of the ingenious, Dear White People, appears fascinated by the concept of grief and the ways it manifests in negative ways for many people. Losing someone you love is a life altering event, it can lead to any number of negative manifestations if it is not dealt with and processed in a healthy fashion. It manifests in Haunted Mansion via LaLeith Stanfield's Ben, an astrophysicist who gave up everything after his young wife died. 

Stanfield is unquestionably an actor who can handle this kind of heavy material but the heavy nature of Haunted Mansion unfortunately drags on what is otherwise intended to be a summer blockbuster version of a Disney theme park ride. While Simien is working in the emotional space of Stanfield's grieving widower, the rest of the movie appears to be going for something broad, campy, scary and yet family friendly and the tonal dissonance is a big part of the overall failure of Haunted Mansion. By attempting to serve a number of ideas, the film ends up serving none of those ideas particularly well. 

Ben (Stanfield) was once a very successful and happy Astrophysicist shyly using his unique profession to hit on women. One of those women is Alyssa (Charity Jordan), a tour guide who leads haunted tours through New Orleans. Ben, being a man of science, doesn't believe in ghosts but he still falls hard for Alyssa and the two end up getting married at some point, we don't see that part. What we do see is that Alyssa is no longer with us, a mystery that will be unsatisfyingly resolved later in the film, and Ben is floundering. Having given up all aspects of his previous life, Ben now leads Alyssa's tours while drunk and being entirely uninterested in indulging and any notions of ghosts being real. 

Ben's trajectory is altered forever by the arrival of Father Kent (Owen Wilson). Kent knows Ben by reputation. He knows that Ben had, years earlier, invented a camera that could theoretically, take pictures of the dead. He has a job for Ben. A single mother, Gabbie (Rosario Dawson), has moved into a decrepit mansion on the outskirts of New Orleans. Gabbie, and her son, Travis (Chase W. Dillon), are also dealing with the fairly recent loss of Travis' father, a loss that neither mother or son has fully processed. The parallel of both Ben and Gabbie having lost someone is used as something of a shorthand to bring them together as love interests but the love story feels rushed and forced. 

That's the thing about Haunted Mansion, I am this far into this review and I haven't mentioned any ghosts. That's because none of the ghosts or scares in Haunted Mansion are very memorable. Jamie Lee Curtis is perhaps the most interesting of the spooks. She plays a dead psychic who was killed and her spirit was trapped inside of a crystal ball. The visual of Curtis's head in the crystal ball isn't bad but its not very elaborate. It's fine, like far too much of Haunted Mansion is fine, it's there, it exists, but it doesn't have much of anything interesting about it. 

The big bad of Haunted Mansion is the Hat Box ghost, played by Jared Leto. The Hat Box Ghost is a remarkably weak villain. The ghost's real name is Crump and the lame comparisons between Crump and Donald Trump are not stated out loud but are very clear. It's a lame non-joke, clearly intended but not well executed at all. It stands out as a bad idea because Leto's performance as Hatbox Ghost is half-hearted at best. The same can be said of the weak CGI look of the character which is scarier in a single drawing by a sketch artist in the movie than it ever is alive and moving around in Haunted Mansion. 

Incidentally, the Police sketch artist in Haunted Mansion is played by Hasan Minaj, a very funny man who is wasted in a nothing performance. Minaj is there to skeptically poke fun at Stanfield and Devito's claims about a ghost and he's offscreen in less than 3 minutes. And, Minaj isn't the biggest waste of talent in Haunted Mansion. Dan Levy and Winona Ryder both make appearances in Haunted Mansion and you are left to wonder if they owed someone a favor and that favor was being in this movie. Levy, one of the most dynamic comic personalities working today gets less than 2 minutes of screentime and his outfit is funnier than anything his character does. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Short Term 12

Short Term 12 (2013) 

Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton 

Written by Destin Daniel Cretton 

Starring Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr, Lakeith Stanfield, Kaitlyn Dever, Rami Malek, Melora Waters 

Release Date August 23rd, 2013 

With the release of The Glass Castle on August 12, director Destin Daniel Cretton is stepping into his first major Hollywood feature. Will he be ready for the pressure that comes with bigger budgets, bigger stars, studio involvement, and the inherent issues that come from attempting to adapt a vaunted best-selling memoir to the big screen? That question will only be answered in a review of The Glass Castle. What we do know is, if The Glass Castle is half the movie that Cretton’s breakthrough feature Short Term 12 is it will be worth the price of a ticket.

Short Term 12 tells the story of counselors working at a short-term home for troubled kids. Grace, played by Brie Larson, is the lead counselor at the home who feels as if she’s seen it all from the children in her care. Naturally, she’s in for a surprise with the arrival of Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) who reflects so much of Grace’s own troubled childhood back at her that it throws the normally well put together Grace into a minor tailspin.

The key to the storytelling in Short Term 12 is intimacy. Director Cretton’s style is up close and personal with tight two person shots that enhance the moments of incredible, realistic intimacy as confessions are made, moments are had, and especially when tragedy strikes. Cretton does a wonderful job of capturing extraordinary moments while also remaining aware of the bigger picture story he’s telling.

The director is aided by a standout cast led by Larson whose big, beautiful beating heart comes through in every scene. Grace may have troubles of her own, but she never loses track of her empathy. Empathy is both Grace’s greatest strength and her biggest weakness as having too much to give leaves one vulnerable, and Grace’s vulnerabilities are a big part of the story being told in Short Term 12.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Girl in the Spiders Web

The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) 

Directed by Fede Alvarez

Written by Fede Alvarez, Steven Knight

Starring Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, LaKeith Stanfield, Stephen Merchant

Release Date November 9th, 2018

Published November 9th, 2018

The Girl in the Spider’s Web stars Claire Foy as Lisbeth Salander, famed hacker and righter of wronged women. Lisbeth has made it her mission to rescue women in trouble and in the opening of the movie we see her hard at work. Lisbeth has infiltrated the home of a rich businessman who has just beaten his wife. The man had been in court just the day before and used his money and influence to skate on charges that he beat up two prostitutes. 

Now Lisbeth has come to make him pay for his misdeeds. We see her snare him in a trap, confront him with evidence of his crime and use her hacking skills to steal all of his money and split it between the women he’s abused, including his wife. Lisbeth uses blackmail to keep the man from doing any further harm to his wife and in short order, even if you didn’t already know Lisbeth Salander from her previous efforts as an avenging angel in other movies and books, you know her now. 

This opening sequence as crafted by director Fede Alvarez is a terrific study in character building. It cleverly allows us to create in our minds a backstory for Lisbeth without the necessity for dimwitted expository dialogue where characters read to the audience a laundry list of the character’s achievements to establish them in our minds. It’s a great example of show don’t tell, one that I wish the rest of the movie had adhered to. 

That’s not to say that The Girl in the Spider’s Web is filled with exposition, the film is quite good about remaining in the moment. There are however, a few of those laundry list scenes that are part of what keeps The Girl in the Spider’s Web from transcending from solidly entertaining suspense flick to something more fully engaging. Had the rest of the movie more closely resembled the off-kilter and brilliantly smart opening section, we could be talking about one of the better movies of the year. 

The story goes that Lisbeth Salander has been hired by a client, played by Stephen Marchant, to retrieve a computer program he created for the American government. To get it, Lisbeth will have to hack the National Security Administration and do it from halfway round the globe. This, as you can imagine from the talent she’s already displayed, will not be her biggest challenge. 

The hack goes off without a hitch but someone has caught wind of what Lisbeth is up to and aims to interfere. An organization that we come to know as The Spiders, wants that computer program and they will do everything short of killing Lisbeth in order to get it. But why not kill her? That appears to be a major flaw in the movie until you get to the reveal that the organization is merely an elaborate revenge ruse perpetrated by someone from Lisbeth’s past with an aim toward a revenge better served if Lisbeth is alive to see it. 

I’m being very generous in my description of the plot. It’s not quite as elaborate as I may have made it seem. That is because the trailers for The Girl in the Spider’s Web ruined much of the most suspenseful part of this movie. I won’t be specific so as not to spoil things for those who’ve managed to miss the film’s two trailers. I will only say that I can imagine the movie playing in a more exciting fashion if I did not have the information from the trailer that is played as a twisty reveal in the movie. 

The trailers are part of the reason why I only like The Girl in the Spider’s Web and not love it. I want to love it, I definitely love Claire Foy whose performance is riveting throughout. Foy is a brilliant actress of great instinct and intelligence. Her Lisbeth easily rivals Noomi Rapace’s original Lisbeth in 2009 and Rooney Mara’s slightly watered down Lisbeth in 2012. 

Foy crafts an angry, injured, but fierce character of great intelligence and ingenuity. Lisbeth could easily be a reductive caricature in the wrong hands. Some have called Lisbeth a goth version of James Bond minus the spy schtick. That’s not entirely unfair, in a commercial sense, I am sure Sony might embrace such simple, digestible distillation of the character. But Claire Foy makes Lisbeth so much more than that with her subtle and nuanced touches. 

Equally strong is Lakeith Stanfield whose Edwin is one of the more original takes on an American spy we’ve seen in a movie, mostly because Stanfield is not the typical kind of actor who is chosen for such a role. Stanfield’s unique energy, part geek, part badass, makes for a wholly original character and Stanfield plays Edwin on his own, very unique vibe. Had it not, again, been for the trailer spoiling the nature of his character, this role could have been even more exciting and intriguing. 

I really like and I do recommend The Girl in the Spider’s Web. The trailers do drain some of the suspense but what’s left is still strong enough for me to recommend it. I could offer a few other quibbles like the charisma free performance of the actor portraying Mikael Blomqvist, the pivotal co-star of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or the laundry list scene that introduces Stanfield’s Edwin, but they don’t ruin the movie. 

I do want to call attention to one other scene however. There is a scene near the end of The Girl in the Spider’s Web that is, to employ a pun only funny once you see the movie, breathtaking. You’ve seen a glimpse of this scene in the trailer but the actual, full length scene in the movie is nearly as strong as that opening scene I mentioned before. In terms of visceral effects, the scene is actually superior but that could be just because it tapped a very specific fear I have regarding breathing. 

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.