Movie Review The Iron Claw

The Iron Claw (2023) 

Directed by Sean Durkin

Written by Sean Durkin

Starring Zac Efron, Holt McCallany, Harris Dickinson, Jeremy Allen White, Lily James, Maura Tierney 

Release Date December 22nd, 2023 

Published ?

Instead of reviewing what I think is a very bad movie, The Iron Claw, I am going to make a list of the many things the movie gets wrong combined with a list of things the film omitted that might have made the film better. As a wrestling fan, I am remarkably familiar with the controversies, the tragedies, and the triumphs of the Von Erich family. The misery porn that director Sean Durkin is engaged in in The Iron Claw is nothing compared to the real life tragedies and controversies that the Von Erich family were part of from the late 1970s and into the early 1990s. 

What The Iron Claw gets wrong: Spoilers ahead, it's based on a true story, but the movie fictionalizes so much that, I guess, this stuff qualifies as spoilers. 

The Timeline 

The Iron Claw proceeds essentially from 1980 when Kevin Von Erich, played by Zac Efron, met and married his wife, Pam, played by Lily James. While at Kevin's wedding, we see Kevin's brother, David, played by Harris Dickinson fall ill. He's vomiting blood and Kevin advises David not to take a trip to Japan the following week, advising David to get some rest first. David assures Kevin he will be fine and he goes on the trip to Japan. Cut to, Fritz Von Erich alone at his kitchen table, distraught. While on tour in Japan, David suffered from Enteritis and died in his hotel room. 

From Kevin Von Erich's marriage in 1980 to David's death from either Enteritis or a drug overdose, depending on whose story you believe, were four years. Four years in which David Von Erich had the biggest successes of his career. In 1980 he broke away from his father and traveled the country working in Florida, where he played a bad guy for a while, a rite of passage in the industry that would not have been afforded to him by his father. He also went to Missouri and was able to win the Missouri Heavyweight Championship, arguably the biggest solo honor of his short career. 

There appears to be little justification for compressing four years into one week and it only serves to remove the devastating emotional impact of David's death, which is reduced to a single scene of Fritz telling Kevin that David had died. Tell don't show is a plague on The Iron Claw as so many significant incidents in the lives and careers of the Von Erich's are either ignored completely or we are told that they happened offscreen. 

Kerry Von Erich's personal life 

In The Iron Claw you would assume that Kerry Von Erich was a lonely, drug addicted playboy whose only life was in the wrestling ring. That's partially true. But what The Iron Claw fails to tell you, I assume because they were cut for time, is that Kerry was married and had children. In the movie, Kerry's marriage and his children, including future pro wrestler Lacy Von Erich, are never mentioned and completely ignored. As Kerry spirals toward his tragic, far to young death by suicide, his brother asks him about some random woman that he'd brought home for the holidays. She was some woman he met on the road or something. He never asks about Kerry's wife or mentions his children as a reason for Kerry not to take his own life. 

More Timeline shenanigans 

If David's death happened a week after Kevin's marriage in 1981, then Kerry Von Erich won the NWA World Heavyweight Championship and at the David Von Erich Parade of Champions event a little over a month and a half later. And, according to the timeline in The Iron Claw, Kerry went out and got very drunk and crashed his motorcycle and lost part of his leg that same night. Naturally, that didn't happen that way. Kerry won the title in 1984, a little over a month after David died that same year. Kerry didn't suffer his motorcycle accident and the amputation of the lower part of his right leg until 1986, long after he'd lost the NWA world title. 

The remarkable and tragic story of Kerry's motorcycle accident. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Baby Mama

Baby Mama (2008) 

Directed by Michael McCullers

Written by Michael McCullers

Starring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear, Dax Shepard, Romany Malco, Maura Tierney, Sigourney Weaver

Release Date April 25th, 2008

Published April 24th, 2008

When Kate (Tina Fey) is told she has a one in a million chance of having a baby she first considers adoption. Unfortunately, being single her wait for a baby could be five or six years. Her only other option is a surrogate mom. A high end company, run by the glorious Sigourney Weaver, sets Kate up with Angie (Amy Poehler).

Kate and Angie could not be more different. Where Kate is successful, smart and focused, Angie is dull witted, messy and hooked up with a loser boyfriend/common law husband Carl (Dax Shepard). Nevertheless, Kate needs a baby mama and Angie is willing so the two strike a deal. Later, when Angie breaks up with Carl she ends up living with Kate while Kate finds herself romanced by Rob (Greg Kinnear) who knows noting of her baby ambitions.

Baby Mama was written and directed by Michael McCullers whose most high profile credit is the script for the most recent Austin Powers outing. He has a talent for outsized, broad comedy and he brings some of that to Baby Mama. Unfortunately, the mixture of McCullers broad comedy clashes with the straight laced character based comedy of Tina Fey and the two fail to mix.

Where Poehler is playing a very broad character, married for seven years, never having gotten pregnant yet hired as a surrogate? Fey plays Kate as straight as an arrow. Given a romance with Greg Kinnear, Fey shines and we see a glimpse of the movie that Baby Mama might have been with a different comic vision.

The odd couple bits between Fey and Poehler feels more like the forced concoction of marketers rather than the organic growth of a comic idea. Reteaming the SNL gal pals holds some appeal with younger audiences, there is no doubt of that, but in Baby Mama the reteaming happens at the expense of a story that had great potential as a romantic comedy.

Greg Kinnear, hidden entirely in the films commercials and trailers, drops in to show exactly what kind of movie Baby Mama might have been. As a juice bar owner who flirts up a storm with Fey before falling for her, without knowing of her baby fever, Kinnear shines with an easy smile and quick witted charm. When he and Tina Fey are together onscreen you want more of them and less of the broader, less believable antics of Poehler.

In essence Baby Mama wants to be a smart, funny romantic comedy but the distraction of Fey reteaming with Poehler prevented that and lead to this lame odd couple knock off despite numerous, obvious, pitfalls. Tina Fey remains somehow above even the lowest of the low moments of Baby Mama and thus the film isn't so bad as to be unwatchable but not quite good enough for me to recommend Baby Mama,.

Movie Review Semi Pro

Semi-Pro (2008) 

Directed by Kent Alterman

Written by Scot Armstrong

Starring Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, Maura Tierney, Andre Benjamin 

Release Date February 9th, 2008

Published 

Will Ferrell is quite a sports fan. Now on his third sports comedy in three years, following 2006's Talledegha Nights and 2007's Blades of Glory, Ferrel shows no signs of sports fatigue in Semi-Pro a basketball comedy set in the seventies with all of the non-sequiter goodness of Talledegha Nights without the gay bashing of Blades of Glory. It's not the perfect synthesis of Ferrell's good natured physicality and out of context freestyle banter, but it will make you laugh. Set in the 1970's of Ferrell's Anchorman imagination, Semi-Pro once again indulges the era of jive turkey, high heeled boots, and lots and lots of disco.

It's 1976 and Jackie Moon (Will Ferrell) is riding high on the success of his one hit wonder chart topper 'Love Me Sexy'. With the money he's made from his disco hit, Jackie bought an American Basketball Association franchise and brought it to his hometown of Flint Michigan. The Flint Tropics are the worst team in the ABA but as owner, coach, promoter and starting power forward, Jackie Moon seems oblivious to the team's disrepair. Unfortunately for Jackie the league is about to fold. Four of the teams, the best in the league, are being folded into the NBA at the end of the season and the Tropics will not be one of them.

Appealing to the other folding franchises, Jackie bargains that the top four teams in the ABA standings be the ones to go to the NBA. Now he needs to turn the team around and start winning if he wants to save his beloved Tropics. To help out he trades the team washing machine for a former NBA benchwarmer named Monix (Woody Harrelson) who came to Flint not to play basketball but to win back his ex-girlfriend Lynn (Maura Tierney). As he clashes with the Tropics star player Coffee Black (Andre Benjamin), Monix once again finds his game and begins teaching the Tropics real basketball.

Now can the team win enough games to finish in fourth place? Can Jackie draw enough fans to keep the franchise afloat and can Monix win back Lynn?

These aren't exactly points of great drama but they are enough of a semblance of a plot to be more than what was offered in the disappointing Blades of Glory. Ferrell here, teamed with director Kent Alterman, here at least attempts to tell a story in between the non-sequiturs. Harrelson and Tierney's characters may be underdeveloped but they are welcome enough actors that we root for them on the periphery of the story. In the meantime Ferrell sings, wrestles bears, roller skates and pukes, the anything for a laugh ethos that has made him a beloved comic presence.

Semi-Pro fails to reach the comic heights of Anchorman or Old School, Ferrell truly at his best, but it is funny, at times uproariously funny. Ferrell and his cast of some of the funniest character actors in the business, including Andy Richter, Will Arnett, David Koechner, Will Corddry and SNL alum Tim Meadows, can't help but be funny even in the most outlandish, out of context and over the top scenes. Scenes that would not work with average actors, work here because of these skilled comedians. The jokes have no relation to the movie but you are laughing and that is really all you can ask.

Movie Review: Welcome to Mooseport

Welcome to Mooseport (2004) 

Directed by Donald Petrie 

Written by Tom Schulman 

Starring Gene Hackman, Ray Romano, Marcia Gay Harden, Christine Baranski, Maura Tierney 

Release Date February 20th, 2004

Published February 19th, 2004 

The transition from TV to the big screen is never without its growing pains. Jennifer Aniston endured films like The Object of My Affection before finding success in The Good Girl. Helen Hunt endured Twister before her Oscar nominated role in As Good As It Gets. For comedian Ray Romano, his growing to big screen stardom begins by enduring the comedic misfire Welcome To Mooseport. On the bright side, at least he got to work with Gene Hackman.

In Mooseport, Romano plays a small-town handy man named Handy. Handy owns a hardware store where a group of local oddballs hang out. His girlfriend is a veterinarian named Sally (Maura Tierney), who he's romanced for six years without mentioning marriage. Handy has also just landed a very lucrative gig fixing the bathroom of the summer home of the now former President of the United States.

Gene Hackman is Monroe Eagle Cole, the most popular former President in history, having left office with an 80 percent approval rating. This is despite the fact that he was the first President to divorce while in office. The former first lady, played by Christine Baranski, took everything but his former title and his summer home in Mooseport.

At a party celebrating the President's arrival a group of town elders asks the President if he would like to run for mayor. The current mayor has passed on and there is apparently no one else running. The President was going to say no until he meets Sally who suggests it would be a good idea. In an attempt to impress her the President takes the gig. Unfortunately, there is one other person who has decided to run. Handy.

This sets up what should be an interesting comic idea. A small town guy running for mayor against the former leader of the free world is a rich comic idea. Throw in the President’s two aides Grace (Marcia Gay Harden) and Bullard (Fred Savage) and it gains even more potential. However, director Donald Petrie (How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, Miss Congeniality) is more interested in the romantic triangle between Romano, Tierney and Hackman and misses the endless opportunity for political satire.

Ray Romano is attempting to break loose from his TV persona and forge a career on the big screen. This role sadly will not help his case. Romano is stiff and often lifeless opposite a pro like Hackman who blows him off the screen. Hackman shows once again how great and underappreciated he is as a comic actor. He was the best part of the con-woman comedy Heartbreakers and he is by far the best thing in Welcome To Mooseport. Of the actors who have played the President of the United States onscreen, Hackman may be the most credible. Hackman has the persona, the gravitas that makes it very easy to believe he's the President. Not that it really matters in a film as dull and lifeless as this one.

Director Donald Petrie is another of those directors that delivers mediocre test screened comedies that studios love because they are inoffensive and more often than not cheap to produce. Welcome To Mooseport reeks of a film that was greenlit with the hope that it might be good but if it isn't, the studio can toss it on to the February schedule and watch it die a slow death before selling it on DVD and TV to cover the expenses. I hope they got their money's worth because that is apparently all that matters.

Movie Review Insomnia

Insomnia (2002) 

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Written by Hillary Seitz 

Starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank, Maura Tierney, Martin Donovan, Nicky Katt

Release Date May 24th, 2002 

Published May 23rd, 2002 

How many times has Al Pacino played a cop? About half as many times as his cohort Robert Deniro, but that is still a lot. However, Pacino has never played cop in a film directed by Christopher Nolan. That is an important distinction. As Nolan has shown, in his previous efforts Memento and Following, that genre is a dirty word. With Nolan at the helm, you know you’re not in for your typical police procedural.

Insomnia has Pacino playing Detective Will Dormer, on loan from the LAPD to an old friend who is the sheriff of Nightmute, Alaska. Dormer and his partner Hap are momentarily escaping an internal affairs investigation that threatens to destroy Dormer's high profile reputation. On arriving in Nightmute, Dormer is met by a young local cop named Ellie Burr (Hillary Swank) who fills us in on how well known Dormer is by discussing his many big cases which she studied while in the police academy.

As for the case itself, a teenage girl was found in a garbage dump having been beaten to death. The case breaks quickly as Dormer and the local cops lock onto a suspect after the discovery of the dead girl’s personal items. The discovery leads to a stakeout that goes horribly wrong, leading to the death of Will's partner and a cover-up that calls Will's integrity into question.

While investigating under the noses of the local cops, Dormer uses some questionable tactics to discover a suspect, a mystery writer named Walter Finch (Robin Williams). Somehow, Finch knows Dormer's secret and tries to use it against him. This begins a cat and mouse game where the mouse proves to be smarter and more adaptive than the cat. 

Insomnia isn't about police procedure and chase scenes, it's about atmosphere and intellect. Williams and Pacino play fantastic cat and mouse with Williams tormenting Pacino with his inability to sleep due to Alaska's never-setting summer sun. Both Williams and Pacino are spectacular as they leave their previous screen chewing person's behind.

Director Christopher Nolan brilliantly uses the never-ending sunlight of this unusual and unlikely location as the perfect backdrop for this intensely dark suspense flick. As Pacino drives around at 3 in the morning and the sun shines, it is as if the light turned his mind into a prison shining a harsh light on his guilty conscience and many regretful decisions.

Nolan is becoming one of the best directors in the world, an auteur whose genius lies in keeping both the audience and his characters off balance. In Memento it was Leonard's short term memory, in Following it was the young man’s writer's block and guilty conscience, and in Insomnia it's Dormer's inability to sleep that keeps the audience and the characters from ever getting comfortable or complacent.

Insomnia is a strong move into the mainstream for Christopher Nolan who manages to make a Hollywood film without compromising his artistic vision and Auteurist style.

Movie Review: Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Boy (2018) 

Directed by Felix Van Groeningen

Written by Luke Davies, Felix Van Groeningen 

Starring Steve Carell, Timothee Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan 

Release Date October 12th, 2018 

Published October 9th, 2018 

Beautiful Boy stars Steve Carell as David Sheff, a very successful freelance reporter living in California. When we meet David he appears to be at a desperate moment. He is interviewing a doctor, played by Timothy Hutton, about addiction. The doctor assumes this is for an article but David informs him that this research is personal. David’s son, Nic (Timothee Chalamet), is addicted to Meth and David has turned to the only thing he can imagine to make sense of things, in-depth research of the kind he’s done as a reporter. 

Indeed, research is the one way in which David Sheff is able to deal with the futility of his son’s addiction. We watch as David takes this research to varying extremes from trying to talk with Nic, to interviewing a young addict over lunch, to interviewing the doctor. He even goes as far as trying methamphetamine himself to understand the appeal. He’s lucky that he didn’t begin his own addiction with that move. 

These interactions are all kinds of interesting but as presented in Beautiful Boy the observations of David, the outcome of his research, have an obtuse quality. We get a vague insight into David, he lives for research, and that’s pretty much the one insight about the character that isn’t vague or assumed. He’s sensitive and he’s compassionate toward his son, he’s loving, but these are qualities we assume of a well to do parent and we wait for the story to tell us something different and it never does. 

David is reminiscent of Donald Sutherland’s character from Ordinary People minus the straw man villain provided in that film by Mary Tyler Moore’s harridan mother-figure. Like Sutherland, Carell plays a saintly figure of suffering but without the Moore character to play off of, Carell doesn’t have many notes to play here. Carell is certainly not bad in this role which leaves me to wonder what anyone thought was particularly cinematic about what David goes through. What is David’s arc? Suffering some to not suffering as much? 

Nic’s arc is to go from child to addict to recovery. That’s not a bad arc but it is off-screen a lot in favor of David’s less engaging lack of an arc. What are we to take away from Nic’s journey? What is special about what Nic went through? His family is wealthy, are we supposed to take away that addiction can happen to anyone regardless of privilege? The film doesn’t appear to have any insight or perspective, nothing really drives the narrative other than drugs are bad, don’t do drugs. 

The main takeaway I had from the movie is that Timothee Chalamet is a very charismatic and intriguing actor who is underserved by a role that doesn’t have a strong narrative engine behind it. Everything is surface level in Beautiful Boy, starting with the beautiful sets and cinematography which are at odds with the agony of Nic’s addiction and the toll it is having on his family. I have joked in the past about characters in disease of the week dramas who have what I call ‘Pretty Cancer,’ that strange type of disease that allows you to remain movie star pretty despite being on deaths’ door. 

Nic appears to have a case of ‘Pretty Addiction.’ Despite the years of meth abuse and living on the streets, the story appears to take place over 5 or 6 years or maybe a decade, now that I think about it, the movie is vague on this point. Regardless of however long Nic’s addiction has gone on, he remains a beautiful young man. Drugs don’t appear to take a toll on him aside from making him rather skinny but Chalamet even makes lanky look handsome. 

There doesn’t appear to be a baseline reality to the story of Beautiful Boy despite the fact that it is based, loosely, on a true story. The film shies away from the uglier parts of Nic’s addiction. For instance, in his book, “Tweaked,” Nic is very open about his years of trading sexual favors with men for money to buy drugs. This doesn’t get mentioned once in the movie and Nic rarely looks worse for wear despite the drugs and what we can presume he did to get them. 

Why did Nic get into drugs in the first place? The film has a scene of father and son sharing a joint and Nic opens up a little about how smoking weed makes life easier to deal with. What was wrong with his life? We don’t really know and perhaps we don’t need to. Kids try drugs all the time, some get a quick high and move on and some take on an addiction that can’t be explained. Brain chemistry makes some people more or less susceptible to drug addiction. 

This is a very specific story about a specific kid who got into drugs, got addicted and stayed that way for a while. There is one thing that stands out that appears insightful and instructive. At one point, Nic talks about being ashamed of being on drugs and how drugs were the only way to stave off the shame. That’s a strong notion, a vivid insight into Nic’s mindset. Beautiful Boy could have used more thoughtful asides like that but the film is dramatically inert. 

Beautiful Boy isn’t notably bad. Timothee Chalamet is incredibly talented and that talent shines through the moribund story being told here. Steve Carell, Maura Tierney and Amy Ryan are quite good at earning our sympathy but the story they are in lacks a narrative engine. The story unfolds in fits and starts that cause the film to drag and feel pointless even as it clearly has one point, drugs are bad, don’t use drugs. 

I don’t want to completely warn you away from this movie as it is not terrible. Beautiful Boy just isn’t quite as good as it should be. The scenery is lovely but the story has no movement. Nic is moving toward not being an addict but the rest of the story sputters along hitting the same note, drugs are bad, don’t do drugs. This does not make for much compelling drama or insightful commentary.

See Beautiful Boy for the performance of Timothee Chalamet but keep your expectations for the movie low. This is not the Academy Award contender that some would like you to believe that it is. It’s a big budget Lifetime Movie of the week at best, with an Oscar-caliber performance from Chalamet that is undermined by the rest of the movie’s lack of ambition.