Movie Review: Bird Box

Bird Box (2018) 

Directed by Susanne Bier

Written by Eric Heisserer 

Starring Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Lil Rel Howery, Machine Gun Kelly 

Release Date December 14th, 2018

Published December 14th, 2018 

Bird Box stars Sandra Bullock as Mallory, a pregnant artist whose sister is killed when an apocalyptic event begins to cause people to take their own lives. Mallory is rescued by Tom (Trevante Rhodes) who helps her get into a nearby suburban home where people have begun to fortify. Douglas (John Malkovich) is opposed to Mallory coming in the house but the owner, played by B.D Wong, welcomes her.

Also in the home is an older woman played by Academy Award nominee Jackie Weaver, a trainee cop played by Rosa Salazar, a drug dealer played by rapper Machine Gun Kelly and a grocery store clerk played by Get Out standout, Lil Rel Howery. It’s Lil Rel who theorizes that an end of the world scenario has begun. He appears to have plenty of evidence to back up his claim but we will soon realize that why is not particularly important.

Meanwhile, the film jumps 5 years in the future. Mallary is now alone with two young children whom she calls, simply, Girl and Boy. Her refusal to name them is part of a character trait she’s built from the beginning of the story with her own pregnancy which she apparently was never particularly excited about. She was worried when she was pregnant that she could not bond with her child and the unpredictable nature of the apocalypse has only deepened her conviction about keeping a child at a distance.

That distance is important as Mallary must risk the children’s lives by taking them on a perilous journey down an empty river while blindfolded. In the past, our heroes eventually suss out that if you keep your eyes covered and you don’t see the evil that is causing people to take their lives, you can get around these demonic monsters. The only people seemingly immune to the evil are the mentally deranged who will provide a secondary villain as the movie progresses.

Bird Box was directed by Danish filmmaker Susannah Bier from a screenplay by Arrival Academy Award nominee, Eric Heisserer. The film is far from perfect but the tension and the minor touches of humorous jump scares are wildly entertaining. Malkovich is on fire in this movie as the ultimate jerk who just happens to be right all the time while Moonlight star Trevante Rhodes makes for a terrifically hunky leading man for Bullock.

You may have heard all about Bird Box from the memes alone. Netflix has hit a social media goldmine with this sight deprived thriller giving audiences a seemingly endless number of quips and screen grabs of jump scares and hot takes. A scene where a characters eyes are forcibly held open so that she can die at the hands of whatever demon is at play has gone viral with numerous punchlines while Bullock’s fearsome mother figure has been raised up as the ultimate example of tough motherhood because she does everything while blindfolded. Take that deadbeat dads.

Honestly, I don’t know if I love Bird Box or the viral version of Bird Box that has become a legend on Twitter. There are blockbuster comic book movies whose supporting characters don’t get shouted out by name on social media yet you can’t help but see twitter users referring to Gary or Olympia or Douglas. The film is a terrifically fun thriller but the film’s other life as a seemingly endless meme generator is even more fun.

Bird Box has many issues, not the least of which is never giving the evil a face or a motivation. The lack of a singular focus for the evil nearly renders the whole of Bird Box as silly as it is in M Night Shyamalan’s ‘the tree’s did it’ thriller, The Happening. Bird Box even cribs that films use of the wind as a harbinger of doom plot devices. Thankfully, the performances from Bullock, Rhodes and Malkovich never let Bird Box tip completely into parody.

Director Susannah Bier is certainly not doing anything particularly original here, especially in the wake of the far more skillful and terrifying, A Quiet Place having come out in just the last 10 months. But, Bird Box has enough of its own charms and modest scares to stand on its own as a genuinely entertaining popcorn thriller. The memes probably helped more than the film itself to make me recommend Bird Box, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit how thoroughly entertained I was by Bird Box.

Movie Review: Uncle Drew

Uncle Drew (2018) 

Directed by Charles Stone III 

Written by Jake Kroell 

Starring Kyrie Irving, Lil Rel Howery 

Release Date June 28th, 2018 

Published June 27th, 2018 

Uncle Drew is a movie that shouldn’t be as good as it is. The movie is based on, of all things, a Pepsi commercial starring a basketball player. In 2015 Pepsi hired then Cleveland Cavaliers star Kyrie Irving to star in a series of commercials. The concept for the campaign was to have Irving dress as an old man and get into pickup games in the park where his overwhelming, real life skills would act as a prank on the cocky streetball players.

The commercials were clever and Irving carried a natural charisma behind all the makeup that sold the concept. That said, that’s pretty much where this story should have ended. The commercial campaign lasted about a year and slowly faded away. Somehow however, someone got inspired. Whether it was the success of Johnny Knoxville’s similarly conceived Bad Grandpa, a film about Knoxville pranking people in old man makeup which earned $151 million dollars on a $15 million dollar budget, or Irving’s plucky charisma, someone got it in their head that Uncle Drew, Irving’s character, would make a good movie.

Uncle Drew tells the story of a basketball legend on the streets of New York in the 1960’s, who simply vanished after his equally legendary streetball team no-showed the finals of the biggest streetball tournament in New York, The Rucker. Decades later, the legend of Uncle Drew lingers as the latest iteration of The Rucker tournament is about to get underway. Dax (Lil Rel Howery, the scene stealer from Get Out), needs Uncle Drew’s help.

Dax has just lost his entire team to his rival, Mookie (Nick Kroll). Dax has already paid the $10,000 fee to get into the tournament and can’t get his money back. The only solution is to get a team together and when he sees Uncle Drew schooling young players on a random streetball court, Dax enlists the legend to be on his team at The Rucker. Drew agrees but only if he can get together his old team including his former best friend turned enemy, Big Fella (Shaquille O’Neal).

It’s a fairly conventional plot from here as Dax and Uncle Drew begin road-tripping to get Drew’s old teammates including Preacher (Chris Webber), Lights (Reggie Miller), Boots (Nate Robinson) and Big Fella. We’ve seen putting the team together montages before but there is something so strange and endearing about this one. Each player is given a tiny story arc to riff on and each is rather surprisingly delightful.

Webber especially has a great deal of fun playing Preacher as a henpecked husband to Betty Lou, played by Women’s Basketball legend Lisa Leslie. The dynamic between Webber and Leslie is basically lifted from the Aretha Franklin subplot from The Blue Brothers but instead of a brassy R & B number, Leslie throws on her basketball shoes and gets in the game. It’s an ancient anti-feminist running gag about a nagging wife that pays off with a surprisingly progressive and clever twist.

Miller and Robinson have lesser notes to play but Miller’s infectious energy is downright adorable while Robinson’s character has genuine pathos. When we meet Boots he’s in a wheelchair and seemingly in the throes of a serious medical condition that renders him speechless. He’s cared for by his granddaughter, played by Erica Ash, who is quite transparently in the film as a love interest for Dax. As the road trip goes on, Boots works his way from a wheelchair to a running, jumping, slam dunk, it’s hard not to smile at the cheesy, empowering never give up message.

In some sort of strange pop culture convergence, Uncle Drew shares the same ethos as the recent comedy Tag: You don’t stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing. It’s a riff on a line from the legendary George Bernard Shaw who appears to be having a minor pop renaissance, even though Tag intentionally gives his famous quote to Benjamin Franklin. It’s a good line, and a great idea to hang a movie on as both films demonstrate.

I am almost embarrassed about how much I enjoyed Uncle Drew. Yes, the movie is clumsy at times and unbearably derivative at other times. It’s a movie that includes a gathering of the team montage and a dance-off sequence. And, it’s based on a character from a Pepsi commercial. By all accounts I should abhor Uncle Drew and yet I don’t. The film is fun, far more fun than some movies with fully original characters and stories.

Uncle Drew has a big goofy heart and a genuine love of sport that somehow won over my curmudgeonly soul. It’s just so darn fun and positive that I could not resist it and neither will you if you give Uncle Drew a chance.

Movie Review Get Out

Get Out (2017) 

Directed by Jordan Peele 

Written by Jordan Peele 

Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Catherine Keener, Stephen Root, Lil Rel 

Release Date February 24th, 2017

Published February 23rd, 2017 

There isn’t much to write about “Get Out,” the new horror-thriller from writer-director Jordan Peele. Not that “Get Out” isn’t brilliant, it is and I am happy to write that. No, I just don’t want to spoil the myriad pleasures of “Get Out” by telling you too much about it. The film’s trailer gives away too much already, a full-scale review would likely only take away from what should be a surprising, shocking, funny, and edgy ride that Jordan Peele has concocted.

“Get Out” stars newcomer Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, a TSA employee and budding photographer who is nervous about the upcoming weekend. Chris is headed to Connecticut to meet his girlfriend’s parents for the first time. This would-be nerve wracking for anyone but Chris has the extra edge of being a young black man who is dating a young white woman, Rose (“Girls” star Allison Williams), who hasn’t told her parents who is coming to dinner.

While Rose assures Chris that her parents won’t care about his ethnicity, Chris’s best friend Rod (Lil Rel Howery, stealing the whole movie) instructs his friend not to go. Putting aside Rod’s seemingly comical warning, Chris loves Rose and figures one weekend in Connecticut won’t kill him. Upon arriving at the Armitage estate, Chris meets the parents, Dean (Bradley Whitford) and Missy (Catherine Keener), each extra awkward in their overly ingratiating, white liberal manner; Dean assures Chris he would have voted for Obama a third time minutes after meeting him. 

Things quickly get weird however when Chris is introduced to the help, Georgina (Betty Gabriel) and Walter (Marcus Henderson). While Chris assumes that fellow black people will make him feel more comfortable, Georgina and Walter are anything but welcoming. In fact, there is something quite menacing in their manner. The pair act and speak like aliens inhabiting the bodies of black people with nothing familiar about them.

I will stop with the plot description there as to avoid any potential spoilers. I can say however that the portrayals of Georgina and Walter are some of the most biting and universal satire we’ve seen in some time. Walter and Georgina implicate all of us from Chris to each member of the audience in the way we expect people to be one way. We expect Georgina and Walter to have familiar, stereotypical traits. We may not know what those traits are specifically but each of us has a model for Georgina and Walter to live into and it is disturbing when they don’t live into it, for us and for Chris.

White liberal guilt is in for quite a workout in “Get Out” as the film takes a few sharps stabs at the ways in which those who don’t consider themselves racist pat ourselves on the backs for the ways we aren’t racist. Newsflash, you are not supposed to be a racist. You don’t get a cookie simply for being better than those who would commit hate crimes. “Get Out” is a perfect jab right to the consciousness of the complacent masses who believe simply having elected a black President has made this a post-racial society.

Don’t be mistaken however, the politics are much subtler and implied in “Get Out” than in the outward example I am giving you here. “Get Out” is first and foremost a horror thriller that uses race as a catalyst. Jordan Peele has said in interviews that he simply wanted to make a movie he’d never seen before and he’s certainly created something original. “Get Out” has horror beats and even a touch of science fiction, often the best genres for subtle satire, but it’s also brilliantly funny, channeling the incredibly sharp wit of its creator.

Again, I don’t want to give anything away about “Get Out.” With that said, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that Lil Rel Howery steals this whole movie. Howery, a stand-up comedian by trade, is put in place as comic relief but just wait, Peele fills out this character in ways that the Coen Brothers might appreciate. Watching Howery I was reminded, in a rather obscure way, of John Goodman’s Walter in “The Big Lebowski.” You will need to see the movie to understand why I say that and probably need to be a huge Coen Brothers fan as well, nevertheless, Howery deserves the praise of the comparison.

“Get Out” ranks next to “Split” as one of the best movies I have seen in the last 12 months. That each has arrived so early in 2017 is a wonder, we usually aren’t this well spoiled so early in the year. Usually, the first two months of any year Hollywood clears the shelves of the dreck they are contractually obligated to release. Does this mean 2017 will be better than any other year? No, but at the very least we have two early masterworks to enjoy for the rest of the year.