Movie Review: The Other Guys

The Other Guys (2010) 

Directed by Adam McKay 

Written by Adam McKay, Chris Henchy

Starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton 

Release Date August 6th, 2010

Published August 5th, 2010 

The “Saturday Night Live” influence on modern movie comedy cannot be underestimated. Yes, the movies based on SNL characters are, more often than not, miserable failures but that is not where the influence lies. The specter of Lorne Michaels lingers in the careers of those comic actors he plucked from relative obscurity and trained into comic athletes who chase the biggest laughs the way linebackers chase down running backs.

Will Ferrell and writer-director Adam McKay were both borne of the laugh competition environment of SNL and their most successful work reflects the instincts honed in a high pressure, big gag business. In three successful comic pairings, and “Step Brothers,” Ferrell and McKay have perfected their own SNL off-shoot, the sketch movie. It has the same characters acting in a series of context provided big gags that forcefully coalesce to something of a story-line that can be called a movie.

The latest Ferrell-McKay brand sketch movie is “The Other Guys” and while some will call the whole thing a send up of buddy cop movies; its success lies in the strength of each individual sketch that, because they include the same characters throughout, can seem like a real movie. In “The Other guys” the sketch by sketch constants are played by Ferrell as a forensic accountant turned vice detective and Mark Wahlberg as a would be big time detective busted down to desk work after he shot Derek Jeter of the Yankees right before Game 7 of the World Series. 

That's the premise each proceeds from, what happens from there is a lot of improv, some vain attempts at creating a story that exists from sketch to sketch and the energy with which both actors pursue a laugh. Credit Mark Wahlberg for being able to keep up with the veteran Ferrell on his turf. Many other actors would be reduced to tears by Ferrell's astonishing ability to riff on the same sketch idea. Wahlberg succeeds by not caring about what Ferrell does, he finds a beat of his own for each sketch and plays that to its comic height.

The Supporting actors in “The Other Guys,” including Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes and Michael Keaton are each given a single beat to play and each succeeds in finding their very particular kind of funny. Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson play the action hero cops whose glorious death scene is a wonderfully dark send up of buddy cops in movies.

Mendes’ joke, not surprising, proceeds from how gorgeous she is and how not gorgeous Ferrell as her husband is. Finally, Michael Keaton plays the oddest beat as Ferrell and Wahlberg’s boss. His joke is that he refers to songs by girl group TLC at random and claims not to know he’s doing it, and what’s great is; the joke works. I wanted to see Keaton from scene to scene just to hear how he would reference another song.

That is the whole of “The Other Guys” each actor taking their cue, finding their particular rhythm and if they happen upon something resembling a story drop it in so we can move somewhat seamlessly to the next sketch. The stuff about corporate espionage and bank bailouts that are jammed in at the edges of “The Other Guys,” that might in another movie make up the story of the ‘movie,’ are mere afterthoughts in “The Other Guys.”

”The Other Guys” like “Anchorman,” “Talledega Nights” and “Step Brothers” before it are movies about comedy. They are feature length attempts to find the most punchlines in the shortest amounts of time. They feature actors and writers whose main goals are cracking each other up and in the process cracking up the audience. Story is an afterthought; something to be picked up in reshoots.

This sounds awful and can be quite bad when not done right. Ferrell and McKay however are pros and they find so many laughs in this sketch movie formula that you can forgive the lack of movie-ness in their movies. “The Other Guys” earns so many big laughs that I forgot about whether there was a story progressing behind it all.

As a movie it's a bit of a disaster but as sketches riffing on the classic Hollywood buddy cop genre, “The Other Guys” is hilarious. Don't ask for anything more than the laughs and you will be just fine.

Movie Review: The Other Side of the Wind

The Other Side of the Wind (2018) 

Directed by Orson Welles 

Written by Orson Welles 

Starring John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Oja Kodar, Susan Strasbourg 

Release Date November 2nd, 2018 

Published November 5th, 2018 

Orson Welles is an elusive figure in the film world. He was at once wholly present and missing in action. Welles’ long exile from Hollywood meant that though he worked consistently, his work was mostly ignored in the world of mainstream cinema. If you’re someone like me who lives in the Midwest and doesn’t have unending access to obscure European adaptations of Shakespeare, then there is a large swath of the Welles’ catalog missing from you. 

Naturally, as a film lover, I have seen and loved Welles’ Citizen Kane, the film that though it provides Welles’ legacy with an eternal life, it was a never ending burden to the man. Kane dominated Welles’ career, it created his reputation as a film savant but also demonstrated him as a filmmaker unconcerned by the desires of commercial film-making. He was an artist first and a temperamental one at that, meaning studios didn’t want to work with him. 

These facts inform the making of Welles’ final film, The Other Side of the Wind, a pompously titled art film that was never completed in his lifetime. Like Welles’ Don Quixote, The Other Side of the Wind was a tantalizing artifact of film history. Was it an unfinished masterpiece or some bloated attempt at a comeback by an over the hill blowhard angry at the industry that betrayed him? 

The new documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, streaming now on Netflix and directed by Morgan Neville, director of the hit Mr Rogers documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, examines the making of The Other Side of the Wind and gives us, if not Mr. Welles, closure on this seemingly doomed movie. Or does it? Watching the They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead appears to lead you to a resigned and satisfied place with The Other Side of the Wind. 

Then you get to the end and find, or at least I found it this way, that Netflix has gone ahead and bankrolled Welles’ friends, including Peter Bogdanovich, and Welles’ family, to actually finish The Other Side of the Wind which completed principle photography in 1975 only to be taken from Welles by of all things, the fall of the Shah of Iran. Welles had been financed by members of the Iranian government and when the state fell in 1979, the movie was seized as an asset. 

It remained locked away until recently and now with the aid of Welles’ notes and those of his late cinematographer Gary Graver, the film was completed and is now available to stream on Netflix despite the fact that Welles and a majority of the cast and crew, including star John Huston and co-star Susan Strasbourg have passed away. The Other Side of the Wind is something akin to a ghost of a movie, thankfully not a zombie but an ethereal filmic being. 

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead appeared to me to be the only way we would ever have closure on Welles’ final film. It was for me, because I didn’t bother to read anything about it before I sat to watch it, such a complete surprise that I could feel the documentary making the turn toward declaring itself the unofficial completion of The Other Side of the Wind. The documentary is about movie making and Welles is even in the documentary discussing how The Other Side of the Wind and the making of it, could easily be a documentary rather than a narrative feature. 

Actor Alan Cumming plays host to the documentary offering rye asides on the travails of making The Other Side of the Wind via the interviews with Welles’ remaining, living friends and collaborators. It is Cumming who appears to make the turn late in the documentary that seemed to me to indicate that the documentary was, itself, the final form of The Other Side of the Wind. I found this to be a lovely and fitting bit of fakery, well in line with Welles' famed F is For Fake, another odd documentary take on reality versus fiction. 

Imagine my surprise then, when the credits began to roll and suddenly Netflix was starting the next feature, The Other Side of the Wind in its completed form. I was shocked and amused and I remained so I could watch it as the two are components of the same remarkable film-making tale. The Other Side of the Wind suddenly existed outside of the documentary and the Welles’ we get to know in They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead would have loved my shocked reaction. 

As much as The Other Side of the Wind was a product of its lack of a budget and the limitations of those involved to remain available to the whim of Welles’ schedule, the experimental nature of the movie meant that it could be recut and re-imagined in a number of different ways. This includes adding or subtracting footage of Welles himself who appears to be making the first meta-textual film/documentary project of its kind. 

The Other Side of the Wind is the story of an aging and failing film director named Jake 'J.J' Hannaford, played by legendary film director John Huston. Hannaford is in the midst of completing his latest movie, a film of which we see throughout The Other Side of the Wind, as a movie within the movie. Hannaford is hoping that his producer will sell the movie to a film producer, modeled after the legendary Robert Evans. If that doesn't work, he needs to convince his young protege, Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich), to loan him the money. 

Otterlake is successful in a way J.J never really was and this fact has strained their mentor/mentee, teacher and pupil, father and son, dynamic. Sure, J.J has all of the love and respect in the world for his work but next to none of the kind of success that Hollywood celebrates. Orson Welles claimed that this relationship was not modeled on his and Bogdanovich's friendship but that seems impossible to believe, even as Bogdanovich appears to humor him and push that narrative in interviews in the documentary. 

Cameras rolled on the set of The Other Side of the Wind at all times, even when a cut was called. There are characters in The Other Side of the Wind playing film students who’ve been invited to film the lead character’s 70th birthday party and Welles had the extras filming at all times, during and after takes just to make sure he had as much footage as possible to put into a final cut in whatever form that final cut might take. 

The documentary makes remarkable use of the footage especially as the actors playing students were encouraged to engage with Welles between takes and Welles indulged in a one sided conversation with the cameras regarding the nature of cinema, with an extra special focus on mistakes and how mistakes can make a scene seem even more real than even a documentary. 

It’s a remarkable insight into the man, even as it is a strong demonstration of his vast egotism. Welles was unquestionably a blowhard but he was never boring and he is wildly fascinating in They’ll Love Me When I am Dead, a figure of Falstaffian charisma. Like him or not, you can’t take your eyes off of Welles. They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead captures the man and the artist in endlessly fascinating ways. 

I don’t have as much to say about the quality of The Other Side of the Wind. It’s a bloviating, free-flowing art piece that both resembles and appears to satirize the French New Wave and the indie darlings of Hollywood’s post-studio era, many of whom play themselves in cameos including Dennis Hopper, Henry Jaglom and Paul Mazursky. Welles appears to be placing himself above the young directors and among them, both peer and influencer, sage critic and desperate wannabe. 

The Other Side of the Wind couldn’t be further from the patient, deliberate and gorgeous confines of Citizen Kane. The Other Side of the Wind is pure chaos where the story appears almost non-existent amid the free flowing experiment that is being captured and wrangled by the editing team like an unbroken colt. The film appears to be fighting the idea of being formed into something like a mainstream feature film and is finally corralled only when Bogdanovich and Huston manage to get Welles to pay attention to them for just a moment. 

All of this is to say that I recommend you watch both the documentary, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead and the final cut of the movie, The Other Side of the Wind, back to back for the best experience. That’s a big commitment, nearly four hours, but if you are a crazy film nerd like me, it’s an experience you don’t want to pass up on. Both They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead and The Other Side of the Wind are streaming now, back to back, on Netflix. 

Movie Review: Outlaw King

Outlaw King (2018) 

Directed by David Mackenzie 

Written by Bash Doran, David Mackenzie, James MacInnes 

Starring Chris Pine, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Florence Pugh, Stephen Dillane 

Release Date November 19th, 2018 

Published December 1st, 2018 

I had been avoiding watching Netflix’s Outlaw King mostly because I value the director, David Mackenzie so much. The director of the acclaimed Hell or High Water is a director I have high hopes for so when I saw his latest film, Outlaw King, getting less than rave reviews, I decided to keep it sight out of mind. That was easy as my field is, generally theatrical releases and Outlaw King was on Netflix. Eventually, however, my curiosity got the best of me. 

Outlaw King stars Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland. Oddly however, when we meet Robert he is on his knee promising fealty to King Edward. Robert was told by his father that the politics of surrender were better than the bloodshed likely if they continued to resist English rule. This changes however, when the legendary William Wallace is captured and killed and his body parts are hung on the walls of a Scottish border city. 

With his father having recently died, and now Wallace, Robert decides it is time to act. His family has a claim on the Scottish throne and he aims to take it. He is opposed by another Scottish family that also has a claim on the throne. Robert would prefer they unite for now and decide on the throne after disposing of the English but when Robert is forced to murder his rival, he knows the fight has begun and that he will not have all of Scotland with him, in fact, they may be just as dangerous as England. 

As you can tell from the mention of William Wallace, this story is in the same vein as Mel Gibson’s Braveheart. Robert the Bruce was a character in that film as well and he was indeed inspired by Wallace’s love of his country to rise up against the English. This story proceeds as if a sequel to Braveheart in some ways, at the very least a continuation of the story. Wallace is killed off-screen in Outlaw King, but his legend hangs over the story, just as Braveheart casts an Oscar winning shadow over Outlaw King. 

That’s a shame because I happen to think Outlaw King is a better movie than Braveheart. Blasphemy, I know, but I have never cared for Mel Gibson’s epic. I found Braveheart loud and boorish and GIbson’s accent was something that I just could not get over. Outlaw King isn’t that much better, Chris Pine’s Scottish brogue is almost as laughable as Gibson’s, but I enjoyed the violent madness in Outlaw King more than I did in Braveheart. 

Chris Pine may not have a great accent but he has a fearsome presence as Robert the Bruce. I enjoyed his straight ahead performance, he rarely appears to be putting on the airs of machismo, he seems genuinely tough. I liked the battle sequences which are raw and gritty and while they may not have the epic expanse of Gibson’s Braveheart, the closeups and the uptight tension of the smaller scale Outlaw King gives the film an authenticity I feel was lacking in Braveheart. 

Nether Outlaw King or Braveheart are movies I ever plan on watching again as neither one is much fun. Director David Mackenzie however, at the very least, compelled me more with his Robert the Bruce story. I was genuinely invested in his story and while I don’t love the movie, I wasn’t compelled to get on my phone and ignore it. Perhaps if you are a fan of historic epics on muddy, bloody battlefields, Outlaw King is the movie for you. 

Movie Review: The Party is Just Beginning

The Party is Just Beginning (2018) 

Directed by Karen Gillan 

Written by Karen Gillan 

Starring Karen Gillan, Lee Pace, Matthew Beard, Paul Higgins, Siobhan Redmond 

Published January 18th, 2019 

As a Karen Gillan super-fan ever since her days as Amy Pond on Doctor Who, I had been anticipating her writing and directing debut, The Party is Just Beginning ever since she announced the project on her instagram. Gillan has been consistently great at picking material, even her short lived sitcom, Selfie, was criminally underrated. She even picks great blockbusters with a co-starring role in Guardians of the Galaxy and Jumanji. Needless to say, I was fascinated to see what she would do with material of her own. 

The Party is Just Beginning stars Gillan as Liusaidh, an unapologetic party girl who enjoys random, anonymous sex and a whole lot of drinking. In other movies the story would be about reforming her, helping her to find a boyfriend, husband or a male savior but that is not what this movie is about. Liusaidh has some deep emotional wounds but she’s not looking for a savior, she just needs a friend. 

Liusaidh’s deepest hurt came from her best friend, Allistair (Matthew Beard). Liusaidh watched as he went into a dead end relationship with a closeted missionary and watched further as Alistair's father died and he kept pushing away her attempts at comfort. The film features seamless flashbacks that you’re aware are flashbacks but don’t feel forced. The flashbacks are layered into the story and it’s clear that the present we are in with Liusaidh, Alistair is not present. 

Death is omnipresent in Liusaidh’s life as her family is plagued by mistaken calls from people attempting to call a suicide hotline. One day Liusaidh decides to engage with one of the callers and they become friends. The caller is an elderly man whose wife died some time ago and he feels that he is now a burden to his children. The caller fears that his children are going to put him into a home so he has considered taking his life. 

Scenes of Liusaidh talking with the caller are broken up by her random drunken hook ups. These include a nameless man, eventually named Dale (Lee Pace), who she comes to see more than once. Dale is just as troubled as everyone else around Liusaidh. I won’t go into that however, I recommend you see that for yourself. It’s not a spoiler or anything, I don’t think I could spoil The Party is Just Beginning, it’s a mood piece more than a traditional narrative. 

Karen Gillan’s direction of The Party is Just Beginning is exceptionally strong. For a first time out, she has a good hand on the basics and some innovation in the way she seamlessly brings the past and present together in the story. She certainly didn’t give herself an easy task with the script which is uncompromisingly experimental in how it weaves the past and present and doesn’t have anything approaching a traditional narrative. 

The film doesn’t have any major dramatics, there are no revelations and Liusaidh as a character isn’t evolving in a classic arc. As I mentioned earlier, The Party is Just Beginning is a mood piece. The film isn’t about anything traditional, it’s about observing this prickly, depressed and unusual character. You are either up for something unusual or the movie is not for you. I was up for every moment of The Party is Just Beginning. 

I’m a sucker for a good mood piece and I found the depressive, slate gray mood of The Party is Just Beginning remarkably engaging. I fought with the movie, my mind tried to cram it into something I recognized until about half way through when I began to settle into what the movie is, an observation of a character we don’t often see in modern film culture. Liusaidh is singularly human, unique and genuine. She feels real, like someone you have seen somewhere in your life. 

The slice of life here may not be to everyone’s palette. The film owns its depressive air and moody atmosphere. Gillan offers no comforts such as sitcom laugh lines or explosive moments of drama. Scenes you think might erupt simply don’t because such recognizable bits of drama would ruin the remarkably curated mood of The Party is Just Beginning. I feel I am not making the film sound appealing but trust me when I tell you, Gillan holds the screen and, if you’re like me, you will be riveted by her work. That’s the appeal here, observing the artful direction and complex performance. 

I had been waiting for some time for this movie to arrive. I had assumed it would be on Blu Ray and DVD soon and I had been looking out for it. What a terrific surprise it was to find the film streaming on Amazon. It’s a little pricier than a DVD rental but it was worth it. The Party is Just Beginning is a terrific film. The film is a an awesome announcement that Karen Gillan is not merely an appealing actress, she is a true artist and budding auteur. I can’t wait to see what she does next. 

Movie Review: The Passion of the Christ

The Passion of the Christ (2004) 

Directed by Mel Gibson

Written by Mel Gibson, Benedict Fitzgerald 

Starring Jim Caviezel, Monica Bellucci, Maia Morgenstern, Sergio Rubini 

Release Date February 25th, 2004 

Published February 24th, 2004 

As controversy swirls about Mel Gibson’s intentions in writing and directing his idea of Jesus’ Passion, you could almost forget about the movie itself. That finally changes on Ash Wednesday when the film hits theaters nationwide and everyone can finally see what it is they have been talking about. What they will see is a spectacularly realized period piece, a moving and evocative piece about the ultimate in suffering. Never before has the suffering of Jesus Christ, the man many believe to be the savior of mankind, been so amazingly and brutally realized on film.

Jim Caviezal takes on the tremendous task of playing Jesus Christ. As we meet him Christ is praying in a forest seemingly unaware that his disciple Judas is at the temple betraying him. Soon Judas, with Jewish soldiers in tow, is standing before Jesus and slowly realizing his terrible mistake. After a brief scuffle during which Christ heals a soldier wounded by his disciple Peter, Jesus is arrested and beaten as he is led to the temple. There, his religious opponents, a powerful Jewish sect called the Pharisees, wait to put Jesus on trial.

Actually it’s not so much a trial as a public lynching where Jesus is once again beaten and not surprisingly found guilty, though of what crime we are uncertain. The Pharisee, led by Caiaphas, wants to put Jesus to death but their religion forbids it. However there is no such preclusion in Roman law and so Jesus is brought to the region’s Roman ruler, Pontius Pilate (Hristo Shopov).

Here is where the film’s most controversial element comes in. The charge of Antisemitism against the film hinges, for some, on the portrayal of Pilate. In the Passion plays of the dark ages, when Jews were blamed for Christ’s death, Pilate was played as an ineffectual wavering leader who tried to spare Christ’s life. After 1968 and the Vatican 2 council, the church made clear their official position that the Jews were not responsible and that it was Pilate, the brutal dictator, who was responsible for Christ’s persecution.

It’s very difficult to parse this fairly because both sides have a fair argument. Gibson’s film does portray Pilate as wanting to spare Jesus while a bloodthirsty mob stands by calling for his crucifixion. However, to say that no Jews, especially the Pharisee had nothing to do with it is also intellectually dishonest. Gibson does go on to portray many Jews who decry Christ’s brutal beating by Roman guards, but whether they are enough to combat the charge of Antisemitism will be up to each individual viewer. Do I think the film and Mr. Gibson are Anti-Semitic? No, but I can see where some people might.

The thrust of The Passion of The Christ is Christ’s suffering, from being punched and kicked by Jewish soldiers during his arrest and trial, to his scourging in the Roman courtyard as Pilate tries to placate the mob without crucifying Jesus, to his brutal bloody walk with the cross on his back to the mountaintop and finally his crucifixion. Some 90 minutes of almost non-stop brutal violence. So brutal that many will walk out and some will become physically ill. This is horror-film-quality violence.

This is one of the hardest films that I have ever watched, but the violence is also very compelling and moving. The scourging and whipping goes on and on and when you think it’s over, they roll Christ onto his bloodied back and continue the beating on his chest. The sequence is nine minutes long and even those with strong stomachs will be hard pressed to watch the whole thing.

Jim Caviezal deserves an Oscar nomination simply for all the punishment he takes. His performance is strongest when he is suffering and praying. His performance in scenes where he is not being bloodied is rather typical of the number of actors who have played the role before, beatific, obtuse, but innately intelligent and spiritual.

Gibson’s direction is strong and steady, his camera witnessing the action, unflinchingly embracing the brutality. Academy Award nominee Caleb Deschanel gives the film a lush and beautiful look with night scenes bathed in blue, the temple scenes swathed in a fiery orange and giving the final walk to the crucifixion bright blue in the sky and clear browns of the sand and walls of the buildings. The period details in costume and production design are flawless.

While I have a great deal of admiration for the film, the artistry of it’s production and the compelling story, I couldn’t escape a feeling of distance from the material that I can only attribute to my religious difference with Mr. Gibson. That I am not a Christian put a distance between myself and the deeply emotional connection that seems to be the intended effect of the film. For the devout, The Passion Of The Christ will be an emotional affirmation of their faith. For others, it’s a remarkable artistic experience but not a wholly satisfying one.

Movie Review: The Perfect Score

The Perfect Score (2004) 

Directed by Brian Robbins

Written by Marc Hyman, Jon Zack, Mark Schwahn 

Starring Erika Christensen, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johannsson, Darius Miles 

Release Date January 30th, 2004

Published January 29th, 2004 

As a director, Brian Robbins has excelled at mediocrity. From Good Burger to Varsity Blues to his latest film, The Perfect Score, Robbins has mastered the kind of mediocre, inoffensive comedy that kept his TV show Head Of The Class on the air for 5 seasons. To Robbins credit, large enough audiences seem to like mediocre inoffensive comedy, but that still doesn’t mean the rest of us have to like it.

Chris Evans stars in The Perfect Score as Kyle, a high school student whose dream is to become an architect. Kyle's dream would come closer to coming true if he could get into Cornell University's School of Architecture. All Kyle needs is a 1430 on his SATs, something that he has failed at once already. He has a second chance coming up but he's not confident he can do any better.

Kyle's not alone, his buddy Matty (Bryan Greenberg) also bombed the first try at the SATs. He needs a score strong enough to get into Maryland where his girlfriend is waiting for him. There's also Anna (Erika Christensen), a straight-A student who freezes up on big tests and did so on her first shot. Then there is Desmond (Darius Miles), the star of the basketball team with a free ride to any college he wants as long as he gets a minimum score. The desperation of these four kids somehow brings them together with a plan to steal the SATs.

Enter Francesca (Scarlett Johannsen) who had no trouble with her SATs but her father does own the building which houses the testing offices where the answers are. When she overhears what the other four are planning she wants in as a way of getting back at her father. And finally there is Roy (Leonardo Nam) who also just happened to overhear the plan. To keep him quiet he is brought in on the plan, his stoner facade hides the fact that he also already aced the test.

With the crew assembled we move on to the mediocre heist portion of the film, full of dull slapstick and forced couplings as the girls pair off by rote with their cardboard cutout boy of choice. The tone of the film is at times melodramatic, at times moderately amusing but often just mediocre. Director Robbins knows how to point his camera straight ahead, he understands three-act structure, he's definitely read books on screenplay writing and knows how to hit his three big scenes. I didn't say they were three good scenes but there are scenes that appear to matter to this story.

Scarlett Johannsen should have known better. She is clearly the best thing about the film, she has the best scenes, but remember, they are the best scenes in a mediocre movie. This role is a good example of what a star Johannsson is likely to become because it shows she can outshine bad material and make the best of a bad movie. That still does not justify having chosen to make this remarkably mediocre film, one exceptionally below her talent and star power. 

It seems that Brian Robbins and writers Mark Schwan, Jon Zack and Marc Hyman wrote this film specifically for test audiences. The Perfect Score hit's it's marks, it's cast has the perfect look to put on a poster, full on Benetton, Colors of the World, test market science, and the story has all the boring relatable qualities of a teen sitcom. Dull, inoffensive, and unmemorable, The Perfect Score is like filmed Muzak. It melts forgettably into the background, not so bad that you get annoyed but not good enough for you to remember the next day.

Movie Review: The Pianist

The Pianist (2002) 

Directed by Roman Polanski 

Written by Ronald Harwood 

Starring Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Emilia Fox 

Release Date September 25th, 2002

Published September 24th, 2002

I have not enjoyed much of Roman Polanski's work. I found Rosemary's Baby to be somewhat tedious and his "comedy" Bitter Moon--with a naked Peter Coyote--is far more horrifying than anything in Rosemary's Baby. I put my preconceptions about Polanski aside as I sat down to watch his Oscar-nominated work The Pianist and found it to be a profound experience.

Adrien Brody, excellent in Spike Lee's highly underrated Summer Of Sam, is Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish pianist who makes money playing Chopin on Warsaw radio. That is, until one day as he is playing, bombs begin to fall and the beginning of World War II overtakes Szpilman's life and that of his family, mother, father, brother, and two sisters. We do not learn much about Szpilman's family except that they are rather typical, loving, bickering, and loyal. As the Nazis overtake Poland, the family is forced from their middle class home and crowded into the small Warsaw ghetto.

The scenes in the ghetto near the beginning of the war are a shocking and brutal sight of people starving and dying in the streets and Jews turning against Jews. Even as some Jews die in the streets, Wladyslaw finds work playing piano for an affluent group of Jews who were able to hold onto enough of their wealth to eat in a cafe with little concern for their brethren who starve in the streets.

Of course, even the affluent would soon learn that no money can save you from blind hatred and, in a short time, all of Warsaw's Jews are loaded on trains and shipped off to the death camps. Wladyslaw escapes the fate of some six million Jews who died in the gas chambers, when a Jewish police officer pulls him off the train and sends him to hide in the ghetto. With help from the Polish resistance Szpilman, spends a good deal of the war hiding in silence behind locked doors. In a poignant and moving scene, Szpilman is hidden in a flat with a piano he cannot play but he mimics playing above the keys and hears the music in his mind.

Most of the film is simply Szpilman, moving from hiding place to hiding place while witnessing history happening around him. He witnesses the Warsaw ghetto uprising, where a group of Jews who were saved from the gas chamber so that they could be employed as laborers, stole guns and fought the Germans for three days before being out-manned and outgunned.

Near the end we do see Szpilman, play the piano again and it is a heartbreaking moment as he seems to have forgotten how to play but quickly picks it up again, and by the end has brought the piece a whole new meaning simply with the courage it took for him to play it. (I'm not familiar with piano music well enough to know what the piece was called but it was very beautiful.) Adrien Brody is truly outstanding in The Pianist.

The Pianist is a very good film. The film is very depressing at times and I mean life-force-sucking, what-point-is-there-to-life-when-there-is-such-cruelty-in-the-world depressing. The subject matter certainly indicates that. Nevertheless, this is a very well made drama about a man who wasn't heroic or necessarily brave. Most of the time he was just lucky. It is rather unique to see a story told from the perspective of a character who isn't an active participant but rather is merely a witness.

Movie Review: The Pink Panther

The Pink Panther (2006) 

Directed by Shawn Levy 

Written by Len Blum, Steve Martin 

Starring Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, Jean Reno, Emily Mortimer, Beyonce Knowles

Release Date February 10th, 2006

Published February 9th, 2006 

It’s not that Steve Martin is no longer a funny guy but, with his last few pictures, save for the exceptional romantic drama Shopgirl, he has really stunk up the joint. Cheaper By The Dozen 1 & 2 and his teaming with Queen Latifah in Bringing Down the House are vapid exercises in the most tired of cliches. The streak of joyless and mostly humorless comedies continues with The Pink Panther, a flailing cannibalization of the famous Peter Sellers film series.

Inspector Jaques Clouseau (Martin) is the model of ineptitude. As a gendarme of the French police, Clousseau's beat has long been the one place where he could do the least amount of damage. However, when the French national soccer coach (action star Jason Statham in a brief cameo) is murdered and his legendary pink panther diamond stolen from his dead body, it is Clousseau who is given the high-profile case.

The chief of French Police Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) chose Clouseau not for his investigatory skill, but rather to be the public face of the investigation. While Clouseau screws up in front of the cameras, Dreyfus and his team can solve the case behind the scenes and then take all the credit. To insure Clouseau does not screw up too badly, he is assigned a partner, Gendarme Gilbert Ponton (Jean Reno), who will attempt to keep Clouseau out of trouble.

Pop star Beyonce Knowles shows up as Xania, an international pop star, solely for the purposes of eye candy and for the soundtrack synergy. The pop star has no relevance to what there is of a plot. Poor Emily Mortimer, playing Clouseau's secretary, is stuck with the thankless role of his love interest, leaving Beyonce to merely provide the film with a marketable pop song for the soundtrack CD.

Once you accept that this is not much of a movie and more of a sketch-comedy exercise, the whole thing comes down to how funny these sketches are. And within that limited criteria, the results are quite mixed. The Pink Panther is exceptionally hit and miss. Certain scenes, such as Clouseau's introduction to Chief Inspector Dreyfuss, are laugh out loud funny. However, the sketches that don't work, like the attempts at bawdy adult humor or Clouseau's dirty-old-man infatuation with Xania, are far more uncomfortable than funny.

Director Shawn Levy is to the comedy genre what Uwe Boll is to sci fi. Okay, maybe he isn't quite that bad. Mr. Boll does set quite a standard, but for the relative ease of his chosen genre, the family comedy, Levy is unquestionably a hack. He can point the camera and capture what is in frame, but he has zero insight into how one scene should flow to the next. Levy has no sense of how to establish a comic or dramatic flow, no sense of storytelling and he has the visual sense of a blind squirrel.

I have not seen the original Pink Panther since the era of the large-form laser disc, so my memory of Peter Sellers as Clouseau is spotty at best. I know from experiencing other films of Director Blake Edwards, who directed Sellers in the original, that he is a far superior director to Shawn Levy, so it seems safe to assume that this new Pink Panther cannot match the original. Call that observation unfair or uninformed if you like, but it's inescapable that Levy is not a great director.

As for comparing Steve Martin and the legendary Mr. Sellers, I have to believe that Steve Martin certainly could match the talent of Peter Sellers. I have seen so much great work from Steve Martin, granted not much recently, that I have to believe him capable of being Peter Sellers' equal. In this film however, with this director, Martin is at a loss to bring this legendary character to life. Martin flails and falls with vigor but it's all for naught. Martin's goose was cooked the second Shawn Levy was named director.

So what, if anything, works in Pink Panther? For Steve Martin being, a complete failure at drawing laughs is impossible. Martin works very hard for what few laughs he gets in this dreadful film, but he does get a few and most come from his teaming with Jean Reno. In a better film, Martin and Reno could have riffed two complete funny performances but in Reno's sporadic screen-time, often cut short for more of Martin's dirty old man bit or the film's bizarre extended James Bond riff, they only have time for a few funny moments, the film's funniest moments.

Also, the teaming of Martin and Kevin Kline as Chief Inspector Dreyfus is inspired, but as with many of the ideas that went into this movie, the teaming is half-baked. Kline has only a handful of scenes with Martin, some very funny, some very much not. Like Martin's teaming with Reno, I watched Martin work with Kline and longed for a different, far better film to feature these two exceptionally talented actors.

The Pink Panther has been marketed as a family movie, so I should warn parents that the family movie tag was one forced upon the film. The Pink Panther was intended as an outrageous borderline R-rated comedy filled to overflow with prurient humor about Viagra, Beyonce Knowles' fine form, and a running gag about Martin and Emily Mortimer getting caught in compromising positions. The Viagra and the leering Clouseau's creepy eyeing of Knowles remain, as does the running gag about Martin and Mortimer, though I understand in much shorter form. These jokes do not belong in a supposed family movie.

Some might say if Sony, the studio that took over the prized property after purchasing MGM, mandated these changes that I should cut director Shawn Levy some slack. I would, if I thought these naughty scenes that are now either truncated or cut completely had the potential to be funny, but I don't see that. Watching what is left of the initial Pink Panther cut, I think Sony likely performed a salvage and rescue rather than the destruction of something bawdy and brilliant. 

Remakes are, more often than not, lazy cash grabs, and while there is little about Steve Martin's performance in Pink Panther that could be called lazy, there is an unquestionable stench of greed and the desire to cash in on a well known property. Worse yet, there is unshakable malaise around The Pink Panther that even Martin at his most manic cannot escape. Whether it comes from director Shawn Levy's poor direction or the general laziness of remakes is debatable.The Pi

Movie Review: The Possession of Hannah Grace

The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018)

Directed by Diederick Van Rooijen

Written by Brian Sieve 

Starring Shay Mitchell, Grey Damon, Kirby Johnson, Stana Katic 

Release Date November 30th, 2018 

Published November 29th, 2018 

The Possession of Hannah Grace stars Shay Mitchell, one of the stars of TV’s Pretty Little Liars, as Megan, a former police officer now working the graveyard shift at a Boston area morgue. Megan lost her partner tragically in a moment when Megan hesitated and didn’t shoot an armed suspect. The moment haunted her to the point of driving her toward alcoholism and abuse of prescription drugs. 

Today, Megan is still haunted by her partner’s death but she’s in AA and recovering. Megan’s sponsor, Lisa (Castle star Stana Katic), got her the morgue job and since she also works there, she keeps a close eye on her newly sober friend. Megan will be spending many long nights by herself in the creepy basement level morgue so having someone to occasionally look after Megan and make sure she hasn’t gone crazy isn’t a bad thing. 

Right off the bat The Possession of Hannah Grace strikes a creepy tone. We start the movie not with Megan but with the titular Hannah Grace who we never really meet. Hannah is possessed by an unnamed and very powerful demon. The demon murders one of the priests during its exorcism by impaling his skull on a cross. The special effect is bad but the impact is strong enough story-wise to indicate the power of the demon. 

The film then, quite interestingly, flashes a graphic that says 3 months later. We’re left to wonder, where is Hannah Grace now? Grace’s father murdered Grace at the end of the exorcism so where has her body been for 3 months? We will get a sense of that eventually but first a handsome and funny EMT, played by comedian Nick Thune, drops off Hannah’s body with Megan in the morgue and the strange occurrences begin to ramp up. 

The Possession of Hannah Grace comes from international director Diederik Van Roojien in his American feature debut. This director’s strengths do not lie with special effects which throughout The Possession of Hannah Grace are hilariously low grade. I mentioned the impaling early on as an example. That scene is cartoonishly, garishly bad with fuzzy images and poor acting combining to get a big laugh without intending to be funny in any way. 

The special effects, thankfully, are only a minor issue. The film makes up for the low grade effects with some top notch creepy sound design. The sound of bones cracking and snapping reminded me of the stomach turning work in the Saw movies. Sean Kennelly was the lead Foley artist on the movie and he deserves a lot of praise for nailing the creepiest sounds for the way Hannah Grace crackles and pops as she stalks the morgue or is being exorcised. 

If you have a weak stomach, the sound design and editing of The Possession of Hannah Grace could be triggering for you. The cracking of bones and the buzzing of flies are amped up to a disturbing degree. Actress Kirby Johnson is a special effect in her own right with the ways she’s able to contort her body and face in the creepiest possible manner. Johnson has a very limited part with minimal dialogue but she manages to make a strong physical impression. 

The Possession of Hannah Grace is not a movie you need to rush out to see in theaters. But, if you are looking for a streaming option once it makes the move to home video, probably in February or so, of 2019, you could do a lot worse than picking this demon based horror flick. The Possession of Hannah Grace is a solid effort in a tired genre that doesn’t recycle every cliche, just a sizable portion of them. 

Lower your standards and turn off your brain and you may find something to enjoy about The Possession of Hannah Grace which is in theaters nationwide this week. 

Movie Review: The Prestige

The Prestige (2006) 

Directed by Christopher Nolan 

Written by Jonathan and Christopher Nolan 

Starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johannson, Rebecca Hall, Andy Serkis 

Release Date October 20th, 2006 

Published October 19th, 2006 

Director Christopher Nolan's short career has been quite exceptional. His debut feature Following showed off a clever, if not accomplished young director. His follow-up Memento however, went beyond clever and into the realm of sheer directorial genius. Nolan came back to earth a little adapting the Icelandic thriller Insomnia for American audiences, showing that he is better off developing his own material.

Any questions about Nolan as a great director however, were answered when he took his first shot at the blockbuster brass ring, directing the franchise kickoff Batman Begins. One of the best films of 2005; Batman Begins raised the profile of Christopher Nolan and raised the stakes on his future success. His latest picture, The Prestige, became an instant buzzmaker with his involvement.

The Prestige, starring Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as rival magicians, is a worthy effort for a director who is still feeling his oats as a major auteur. Clever and accessible, The Prestige is just smart enough to be a Christopher Nolan movie and just thrilling enough to be considered mainstream popcorn entertainment.

In turn of the century England magic is big business on the isle. Prestidigitation, legerdemain, and simple flim flammery are so popular that stages are eager to snap up the latest trickster. Into this world of con-men and showbiz folk, come two young men eager to learn the trade. Rupert (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred (Christian Bale) broke into the business together as audience plants for a hack magician (Mickey Jay in a minor cameo).

Their job is to wait patiently in the audience until volunteers are needed. They then eagerly head for the stage to take part in a very important trick. They are to tie the magicians assistant, Julia (Piper Perabo) who happens to be Rupert's wife, tightly and watch as she is lowered into a water tank and locked inside. The trick is that the magician will make her disappear.

The trick is pretty basic, the knots aren't very tight, the lock is tricked, Julia's escape is assured, though were something to go wrong the stage manager, Cutter (Michael Caine), is side stage with an axe. One night something goes horribly wrong. Unable to untie an overly elaborate knot, tied by Albert, Julia drowns. This begins a rivalry that is far more than professional jealousy.

Blaming Albert for his wife's death, Rupert saves his revenge for his ex-friend's first solo show as a magician. When Albert goes for his signature trick, catching a bullet from a tricked gun, he unfortunately picks out a disguised Rupert who fires a real bullet that takes two fingers from Albert's hand. The rivalry devolves from there to stealing tricks, trading women, one woman, Rupert's assistant Olivia (Scarlett Johannsen), and trying to one up each other with more and more complicated and dangerous illusions.

The magic of The Prestige however, is in the storytelling. Christopher Nolan, working from a script written by his brother Jonathan, toys with the time and space of his story in unique and often surprising ways. The movie begins with Albert in jail for having committed a murder. Then we are flashed back to Albert and Rupert's beginnings, as described above, and back and forth between the journals of both magicians, each written at the height of their rivalry.

The non-linear storytelling keeps us off balance for much of the picture, as in a good magicians trick; your looking one way as the trick happens the other way before being revealed and fooling you. The magic of The Prestige is not the staged theatrics which Nolan willingly explains and demonstrates, the magic is in the quiet misdirection and sleight of hand in the storytelling and direction.

Not all of The Prestige works. There are moments when you will easily be able to see what is coming next, the little sci fi twist late in the film is telegraphed, but the payoffs even on the most predictable twist are stunning and well crafted. The ending of The Prestige will confound some audiences but for those who have paid attention its a terrific jaw dropper.

Magic is big on the big screen this fall. The Illusionist starring Edward Norton has been one of the hottest indie features of the fall. Now The Prestige with an all star cast and a rising star director arrives with a whole lot of buzz and delivers a thrilling piece of magical storytelling. While the films shifting timeline can be confusing from time to time, it is essential to Nolan's way of telling this story. In demonstrating the magic of film-making, the ability to craft your own time and space, he honors real magic.

Adding to the prestige of this story is one sensational cast. Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johannsen and Michael Caine are exceptional, that you know. What you may not know though is just how brilliant David Bowie can be. Showing up almost unrecognizable as the legendary inventor Nikola Tesla, Bowie dazzles us with a deft turn that steals a few very good scenes.

Christopher Nolan is unlikely to win awards with movies like Batman Begins and The Prestige but that is certainly not his fault. Both films are sensational works that deserve award consideration. But, Nolan is fighting an academy mindset that is against anything that appeals too young or too mainstream. You can forget the academy ever giving a fair shake to something like Batman Begins, simply out of bias toward it's source material.

But most shockingly, even a period piece like The Prestige, no matter how ingenious and well crafted, will never earn awards attention. It's a thriller, with youth appeal, and a young, unproven cast. The academy may not love The Prestige, but you just might. This is simply a terrific film, who can't enjoy that.

Movie Review: The Prince and Me

The Prince and Me (2004)

Directed by Martha Coolidge 

Written by Jack Amiel, Michael Begler, Katherine Fugate 

Starring Julia Stiles, Luke Mably, Ben Miller, James Fox, Miranda Richardson

Release date April 2nd, 2004

Published April 1st, 2004 

I find it weirdly fascinating that to this day the film that so many women I know believe is the ultimate romantic fantasy is Pretty Woman. Pretty Woman is an awful movie about a sex worker who gets picked out of obscurity by a rich guy and the whole thing is played like the ultimate romantic fantasy, as of all sex workers are just one super rich guy from no longer having to live and work in the streets. This is the height of romantic fantasy for some? 

For a more lighthearted romantic fantasy with grounding in something much more wholesome than the sex trade, see The Prince and Me with Julia Stiles. It’s a classic romantic fantasy about the commoner who marries a prince. While it lacks Julia Roberts’ blazing charisma, it too has its charms.

Julia Stiles stars in The Prince and Me as Paige Morgan, a Wisconsin University senior with plans for post-graduate education at Johns Hopkins medical school. She refuses to be distracted by anything, especially a boyfriend. This is, of course, when she meets Eddie (Luke Mably), a handsome foreigner who immediately gets on her nerves. Of course they are forced together as lab partners in an important class and Eddie gets a job on campus at the same bar where Paige works.

This is your typical forced romantic setup except that Eddie also happens to be Prince Edward of Denmark. He does not tell Paige about his royal heritage, even after she is kind enough to bring him to her home for Thanksgiving dinner. Paige lives on a dairy farm, which not surprisingly this gives Eddie a number of opportunities to do the kind of fish out of water comedy bits that are the bread and butter of hack screenwriting.

I will give them credit for one inspired bit of Wisconsin humor, watching Eddie compete in a lawn mower race and then brawl with locals makes for a couple of unexpectedly funny scenes. I do have a few questions about this sequence however. It’s Thanksgiving in Wisconsin and it’s sunny and 60 degrees? I seriously doubt that.

Eventually Paige will find out Eddie is actually Prince Edward and various other romantic complications will all lead up to the grand romantic gesture and lets not kid ourselves, it’s no spoiler to say this will have a happy ending. Still, how it gets there is a sweet, often charming story. Stiles and Mably have good chemistry and make a lovely couple. My only quibble is that they’re not very funny. While I liked the actors, both are rather wooden and neither is a great comedic presence.

Director Martha Coolidge is more than capable behind the camera and at times you can see some flares of style. There is an ephemeral look to some of the romantic scenes and like many romantic fantasies she uses a little of that “Barbara Walters lighting” that gives everything a soft edge. Nothing new, but very comfortable and relaxing. There isn’t much for a director to do with a script that is pretty much on auto pilot on it’s way to happily ever after.

The film’s biggest problem is it’s ending. We get what we expect from romantic fantasies but the film tries to get clever about it and ends ups making the characters look very stupid. A simple romantic complication that could have been summed up in two or three lines of dialogue is instead dragged out over another five minutes screen-time. At 110 minutes, the film is way too long and the extended ending makes it feel even longer.

Nevertheless, as romantic fantasies go, I would prefer my daughter (if I had one) to have this fantasy over Pretty Woman any day. It’s charming and sweet with a pair of actors that are destined for greater things. 

Movie Review: The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009)

Directed by Rebecca Miller 

Written by Rebecca Miller

Starring Robin Wright, Mike Binder, Alan Arkin, Winona Ryder, Zoe Kazan, Keanu Reeves, Blake Lively

Release Date: November 27th, 2009

Published November 26th, 2009 

One woman re-traces the story of her life as she worries her mind is slipping away in “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.” Robin Wright stars as Pippa Lee, a wife and mother whose life is defined by those roles. As a very young lost soul, Pippa met and fell in love with the much older Herb Lee (Alan Arkin).When we meet Pippa Lee, she and Herb have moved into a retirement community in Connecticut. While Herb says they moved in order to protect assets from his life as a publishing magnate from taxes, both are concerned that Herb's mind has begun to slip. 

In the middle of the night someone has been wandering the house leaving a major mess. It turns out not to be Herb but Pippa who has been sleepwalking and that isn't all. She is sleep-driving and sleep-smoking, driving in the night to a local 24-hour shop to buy cigarettes. Afraid she is losing her mind, Pippa tracks back in her mind to her mother, Suky (Maria Bello), a woman addicted to amphetamines who didn't merely dote on her daughter but overwhelmed her as a living doll plaything.

Pippa's mother's addiction and massive mood swings lead to Pippa's own drug experimentation and eventually to her running off to New York to live with her lesbian aunt and her girlfriend, Kat (Julian Moore). Blake Lively plays teenage Pippa with a constantly dazed expression and sad eyes. It is teenage Pippa who meets and falls for Herb. 

Though I recount the plot to you in a somewhat linear fashion, writer-director Rebecca Miller, tells the story in a flashback style, cutting between Pippa's life in the retirement community and her life before and during the early parts of her marriage to Herb. The storytelling doesn't really jibe; the past doesn't comment on the present or really explain it. Pippa's memories are sort of random. That's not necessarily a criticism, Pippa is searching her memory for a meaning that is missing from her life and it makes sense that her search is futile.

The story deepens when Pippa meets Chris, the son of one of the other retirees. He has just ended a long relationship and now lives with his mother while working at the 24-hour shop where Pippa sleepwalks. To say what happens between Pippa and Chris would go too far, but I can tell you, it's not entirely what you might expect. That is the wonderful thing about Rebecca Miller's direction in “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee,” she and star Robin Wright Penn avoid typical choices. Penn's performance begins as off-puttingly thin. It grows to an irksome sort of oddity and then blossoms into something strangely, hypnotically fascinating.

If I had walked out half way through “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” I would say Robin Wright was terrifically awful. However, I stuck with it and eventually I found that even the irritating qualities had an odd fascination. As I got used to Pippa's irritating qualities they began to reveal things about her and I was slowly won over. By the time Pippa makes her dramatic final decision I was totally with her and shocked by how much I was willing to join up for more of her journey.

The movie ends as if it could have gone on for another half hour and been just as intriguing. It's just the right hopeful note and if you can make it to the end, as I did you  will be surprised how satisfying yet abrupt the ending is.

“The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” is a strange and wonderful little movie with a performance by Robin Wright at its center that will divide people in hatred and glowing praise. It's a risky performance and one that will, in the long run, come to define the odd career of Ms. Wright who never quite blossomed into the leading lady so many expected her to be. Instead she is a working actress who’s made daring choices. Daring is the least of what can be said of Robin Wright's performance in “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.”

Movie Review: The Prodigy

The Prodigy (2019) 

Directed by Nicholas McCarthy

Written by Jeff Buhler

Starring Taylor Schilling, Jackson Robert Scott, Peter Mooney, Colm Feore 

The Prodigy is the latest in a long line of uninspired horror movies with an okay premise that falters in overly familiar execution. It is not merely that The Prodigy is predictable this horror movie from cult horror director Nicholas McCarthy (At the Devil’s Door) is insultingly predictable. The Prodigy is directed as if the film was made specifically for audiences so bereft of common sense that they need every last detail spelled out for them. 

The Prodigy stars Taylor Schilling of the Netflix hit Orange is the New Black as Sarah. As we meet her, Sarah is pregnant and on her way to giving birth to her first child. Crosscut with Sarah’s trip to the birthing center is the escape of Margaret (Brittany Allen) from the lair of a serial killer named Edward Scarka. Edward is known for cutting off women’s hands before murdering them and hiding their bodies. 

Scarka isn’t aware that his latest victim has escaped until he happens to see police approaching his door. At that moment, Edward’s strips nude walks out of his cabin in the woods to confront the cops and essentially commits suicide by cop. This happens just as Sarah welcomes her son Miles into the world and by some crazy movie magic, the soul of the serial killer leaps into the body of baby Miles without anyone noticing. 

At an early age, Miles (Jackson Robert Scott) demonstrates traits well beyond his years, but it is not until he turns 8 years old that his parents notice that he is not the loving young boy he once was. The serial killer has begun to come forward in Miles subconscious leading to him trying to kill his babysitter and eventually turning his evil eye to his extended family. Colm Feore then pops up as a doctor whose existence is predicated on delivering exposition for those in the audience who may nod off for part of The Prodigy and need a character to spell out and reiterate the plot. 

The imagery in The Prodigy is as insultingly simple minded as the script. Early on director McCarthy uses the image of Edward’s face split by makeup or mirrors to underline his dual nature. In case you need cliffs notes in the middle of the movie, Miles has one blue eye and one brown eye as further film school underlining of the kid’s dueling personalities, killer and kid. Perhaps this won’t be perceptible to those that don’t see many movies but if you see movies regularly it may be hard to stifle your groaning and simultaneous eye roll. 

I am struggling to find positive things to say here. I know people complain when I am just negative but there really isn’t much good to say about The Prodigy. It’s clean looking, it has solid if unspectacular cinematography. That’s something. When director McCarthy isn’t overdoing images of duality, he does cut a professional looking scene throughout The Prodigy. I have no qualms about praising The Prodigy for its crisp visuals. That however, is, sadly, not remotely enough for me to recommend the movie. 

Taylor Schilling is perhaps the other element of The Prodigy that is passable. Schilling is good at looking haunted and terrified. I guess it is fair to say that she doesn’t let the script insult her character’s intelligence. Sure, she makes mistakes but nothing a good rewrite of a couple of scenes could not have fixed. Had the film perhaps relied more on her abilities and less on telling instead of showing, she might have elevated the material. 

The Prodigy is not the kind of abomination that makes me hate going to the movies. Is that me saying something nice? The Prodigy is more harmlessly forgettable than it is offensive. Again, I can’t tell if I am being condescending or kind here. 

Movie Review: The Punisher

The Punisher (2004) 

Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh 

Written by Jonathan Hensleigh 

Starring Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Rebecca Romijn 

Release Date: April 16th, 2004 

Published April 15th, 2004 

Previous to Avi Arad’s days as CEO, Marvel Comics made a number of bad deals involving the film rights to its comics. The Fantastic Four was sold to Roger Corman's production company (yes that Roger Corman). Do we want to remember those awful Captain America and Spiderman TV movies? Ugh. And who can forget 1989's The Punisher with Dolph Lundgren? Well most people have forgotten that, thankfully. Now The Punisher has a new life on film and the best that can be said is that it's better than the Dolph Lundgren version.

Thomas Jane is the new Frank Castle, a special forces trained FBI Agent who has just wrapped up his final case with his own faked death. Unfortunately, in a case where he hoped no one would be killed, a mobster’s son was taken down. The mobster, Howard Saint (John Travolta) is of course none too pleased with this and sets out to find the man responsible. With little effort he finds Castle is not really dead and sets out to kill him, and at his wife Livia's (Laura Elena Herring) suggestion, kill Castle's entire family as well.

Saint sends his top thug Quentin Glass (Will Patton) and a large goon squad to Puerto Rico where the entire Castle clan, cousins, and uncles, and grandparents, and so on and so on, all just happen to be gathered. The gang kills the entire family then chases down Frank's fleeing wife and child and brutally run them down. Then it's Frank's turn as he arrives just in time to see his wife and child die and then get the living crap kicked out of himself by the bad guys. In typical bad guy fashion, rather than just shooting Frank in the head the baddies plot an elaborate torture that Frank manages to escape. Well if they did the smart thing there would be no movie.

Castle does survive and soon is back in Tampa ready to make Howard Saint pay for killing his family. Along the way Frank hooks up with three oddballs who share a rundown tenement apartment building with him. They are Joan (Rebecca Romijn) a waitress with a taste for the wrong kind of man, Bumpo (comedian John Pinette) an effeminate overweight chef and Spacker Dave an overly pierced slacker. They try to draw Frank into their circle but other than protecting them from evil, Frank has little interest in them.

Frank's sole focus is an overly elaborate revenge on Howard Saint. If it weren't overly elaborate, again there would be no movie, but this is quite unnecessarily melodramatic and prolonged. The revenge involves Saint, his wife and Quentin Glass, a simple misunderstanding, and a fake fire hydrant. Where does one even acquire a fake fire hydrant? I'm not sure but it seems quite handy, unless there were an actual fire. It's all very melodramatic until the final 10 minutes when it devolves into a massive crunching bore of gunfire and the unnecessary use of way too much C4 explosive.

Director Jonathan Hensleigh obviously learned a lot from scripting Armageddon and producing Con Air for Jerry Bruckheimer. He learned how to use massive explosions to grand excess. He learned that you can never under-use gunfire and that a movie doesn't have to make sense as long as you kill, maim or explode someone every other scene. Not that this approach doesn't have it's moments but as every Bruckheimer movie shows, the formula grows tired quickly and so it does become quickly tiresome in The Punisher.

To the credit of Thomas Jane, The Punisher's belligerence is seemingly not his fault. Jane's performance is perfectly calibrated to the films dark, humorless tone. Jane's Punisher is brooding, tough, and without a trace of wit. Which seems to be exactly what the movie was going for if you watch all that surrounds his performance. Jane sells the character all the way even as he is forced to become less and less human and more of a horror film cartoon. Rambo crossed with Jason Vorhees.

John Travolta is wearing his Swordfish toupee which means he is in sneering bad guy autopilot. Nothing new for Travolta who grows more and more bored with each subsequent role these days. Hopefully his return to playing Chilli Palmer in Be Cool will revive his love of acting. In The Punisher Travolta gives up about half way through and figuratively rolls his eyes through the final 45 minutes of the film.

As bad as this movie truly is I must admit that I enjoyed some of it's over the top violence. The films major, one on one, fight scene between Tom Jane and pro wrestler Kevin Nash, the seven footer simply called The Russian in the film, brings the film’s only light moments as Jane marvels at the size of his opponent and his own numerous failed attempts to hurt the big man. It's kinda fun but it's been done, Stallone made beating up the bigger man a staple of his act back in the mid-eighties.

The film’s final violent set piece looks like an attempt to burn whatever remained of the film’s budget. I swear, it's as if they were told they had to spend a certain amount and nothing less so they just blew up whatever remaining cash they had in an orgy of explosions and gunfire.

At two hours and ten minutes, The Punisher is punishing on the audience. Repetitiously violent in between it's overly imaginative and melodramatic plots, The Punisher would be a candidate for worst of the year if Thomas Jane weren't such a pro at selling this big. dumb, loud plot. It's better than the Dolph Lundgren version of The Punisher, but staring at a blank screen for ninety minutes would be more entertaining than that picture. I would hope that the producers were aiming for more than bettering that film. Sadly that turns out to be the film’s only accomplishment.

Movie Review: The Proposition

The Proposition (2005) 

Directed by John Hilllcoat 

Written by Nick Cave 

Starring Guy Pearce, Richard Wilson, Ray Winstone, and Danny Huston 

Released March 10th, 2006 

Published March 8th 2006

A house is riddled with bullets. Inside, a group of supposed outlaws fights for their lives. Most of the homes inhabitants are killed save for two. These two are members of the famed Burns Gang, middle Burns brother Charlie (Guy Pearce), and youngest brother, Mikey (Richard Wilson). Captured by the Captain (Ray Winstone), the brothers are given death sentences but with a caveat.

Mikey will be taken into custody with a noose waiting for him on Christmas day. Charlie can save Mikey's life if he travels to a remote part of the Australian outback, where even aborigines fear to tread, and track down his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston). Arthur is wanted for the brutal rape and murder of a close friend of the Captain's wife (Emily Watson). The proposition that the Captain offers is a dangerous gamble, a mob waits back in the small Aussie village where the captain presides. If they find out the Captain had captured Charlie and released him, no reason will be a good enough explanation.

That is the plot outline of The Proposition, a brutally violent morality play set in early 20th century Australia; a place with more than a passing resemblance to the old west of American legend. The Proposition shares more than a passing resemblance to the western legends of John Ford and the Italian westerns of Sergio Leone, only darker and more violent. The Proposition is graphically violent with a purpose. 

Directed by Aussie video director John Hillcoat, best known for the early videos of INXS, from a script by rocker Nick Cave, who also composed the films eerie, old west soundtrack, The Proposition is stylish and often breathtakingly so. With the help of cinematographer Benoit Delhomme, director Hillcoat crafts gorgeous images of the outback juxtaposed against ghastly violence and gore.

Danny Huston has never had such a meaty role. Often left with mustache twirling villains or officious corporate worms, Huston defies his type casting with this twisted but oddly soulful killer. At one moment musing poetry and another twisting a knife into a man's chest, it is Huston's wild far away eyes that communicate his malevolent character. Much of the violence that Arthur Burns performs, his most sadistic actions, happen off-screen, out of our view. His true, vile, criminality is left to our imagination which allows it to become as twisted as we make it.

Guy Pearce creates Charlie Burns from his bones. Slimming his already skinny frame down to the pulpy, knotted muscle, Pearce is a feral animal with cold dead eyes who has somehow retained a shred of humanity that his older brother has not. His moral dilemma over the proposition is really a coming to grips with his own crimes. His puzzlement over killing his brother comes from the question of whether the murder will be enough to save his own tortured soul.

Ray Winstone rounds out the three leads with a performance that early on feels very one note. Winstone is introduced as corrupt cop who is torturing Charlie and Mikey into doing his bidding. However, as the story progresses, the Captain becomes the films moral compass and Winstone deepens the role with grace and sadness. 

The Proposition is not for everyone. It is not classically entertaining like the kind of film you catch on late night cable and can watch repeatedly. For true film buffs and fans of hardcore westerns, The Proposition is the kind of movie you go to the movies to see. For the average moviegoer, I would say find something else to rent on Saturday night. For those who appreciate film technique, a director in complete control of tone and pace and violence that has the purpose of leaving a mark in your imagination, The Proposition is the movie for you. 

Movie Review: The Proposal

The Proposal (2009)

Directed by Anne Fletcher 

Written by Peter Chiarrelli 

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Sandra Bullock, Betty White, 

Release Date June 19th, 2009 

Date Published June 18th, 2009

It's the definition of a hackneyed premise. An immigrant desperate to stay in the country enters into a sham marriage in order to pull a fast one on the government. Good movies, bad movies and trite sitcoms have bounced this premise around for years. Thus, the new comedy The Proposal doesn't exactly excite those looking for some original laughs. Oh how I love to be surprised. Yes, the premise is hackneyed beyond belief, but with talented stars and a smart director, The Proposal turns this cliched premise into a wonderfully fresh and funny comic romance.

Sandra Bullock stars in The Proposal in the role that is traditionally given to a man in movies like this, a high powered New York executive. Bullock is Margaret a publishing magnate who is hated and feared by her subordinates. Ryan Reynolds is Andrew, Margaret's desperately put upon assistant anointed with the ugly tasks of being Margaret's everyday punching bag.

Margaret happens to be Canadian and in the country on a visa. She has put off renewing her visa so often that she has accidentally allowed it to expire and she is about to be deported. That is when she gets an idea, she will just tell her boss's and the American government that she is in love and is marrying Andrew. For his part, Andrew is desperate for a raise and a promotion and this is just the opportunity to get ahead at this company. 

If Andrew agrees to marry Margaret she gets to stay in the country and he gets what he wants, the chance to move up the corporate ladder. It's also quite motivating that if Margaret goes, Andrew is likely to get fired. In order to convince the government they are a real couple they agree to travel to Alaska for a weekend of meeting all of Andrew's relatives including his mother (Mary Steenburgen), father (Craig T. Nelson) and Gammy (Betty White).

If, from the above description, you cannot figure out that the hard hearted exec will be won over by the wacky Alaska clan, then you are just not trying. However, what's great is how she is won over and how well she fights it off... for a little while anyway. Director Anne Fletcher, who charmed her way through the equally formula charmer 27 Dresses last year, deftly works the typical into something unexpected and terrifically funny.

Take for instance Margaret's secret love of rap music or the clever use of the great Betty White not for awkward laughs but honest warm, unexpected belly laughs. A character like White's Gammy would, in a lesser movie, be used to score cheap points with inappropriate humor or oddly sexual asides. There are some iffy jokes sent Gammy's way and batted right back, but White is so winning that things never enter that uncanny valley of ungainly vulgarity.

White is a scene stealer but even she loses a couple scenes to one Oscar Nunez. Best known for his quiet, dignified gay man on TV's The Office, Nunez plays Ramone a ubiquitous presence in the lives of Andrew's family who takes an immediate liking to Margaret and delights in shocking her with his ability to be seemingly everywhere.

As for the leads, Bullock hasn't been this good since While You Were Sleeping yet the characters couldn't be more different. Where Sleeping's heroine was all cuddly insecurity, Margaret is a real ballbuster. Blustery and bossy with a steely manner concealing an honest slightly wounded soul, Bullock's Margaret is the rare romantic heroine whose inner life fuels her outward action.

The care taken to give life to Margaret beyond the plot and the obvious character type is what sets a movie like The Proposal apart from other formula romances that rely on the premise to invent the character. The same could be said of Reynolds' Andrew whose daddy issues and innate good nature fuel his actions toward Margaret and make believable the idea that he could in the course of a plot that unfolds in three days, fall for Margaret in ways that make us want them together.

Even with its trite premise The Proposal is fresh, funny and joyous. Sandra Bullock is the Sandra Bullock she was always supposed to be before bad choices like Miss Congeniality 2 and a couple ugly looking thrillers knocked her off of stardom's path. Ryan Reynolds is only a box office hit away from establishing his star presence. With last year's exceptional Definitely Maybe and now The Proposal his chops are unquestionable.

The Proposal may be the best romantic comedy of the year.

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. 

Movie Review: Beauty Shop

Beauty Shop (2005) 

Directed by Billie Woodruff

Written by Kate Lanier

Starring Queen Latifah, Alicia Silverstone, Alfre Woodard, Mena Suvari, Kevin Bacon, Djimon Hounsou 

Release Date March 30th, 2005

Published March 30th, 2005 

Ever since her breakthrough role and Oscar nomination with 2002's Chicago, Queen Latifah has struggled to find material worthy of her talent.  Chicago has led to a string of awful movies like Cookout, Taxi, and Bringing Down The House, the latter being the only hit of the bunch and arguably the worst of them. None of these awful films, however, has dimmed the Queen's star presence. She is still a welcome presence onscreen even if her movies don't do her talent injustice.

The latest example of Queen Latifah's star presence, the Barbershop spinoff Beauty Shop, is yet another bad movie where Queen Latifah outshines bad material.

In Barbershop 2 Queen Latifah introduced the character of Gina, beauty shop owner who had the guts and talent to go toe to toe with Cedric The Entertainer's cantankerous old man, Eddy. In Beauty Shop Gina has packed up her talent and attitude and headed for Atlanta where she works at an upscale salon and hopes to soon open her own shop.

Her boss is your typically effeminate diva stylist, Jorge Christophe (a nearly unrecognizable Kevin Bacon with a faux Euro-trash accent). Jorge constantly dumps his work off on Gina who earns the trust and loyalty of his clients because of her talent. However when Jorge criticizes Gina in front of the entire salon, saying that he "owns her ass", Gina quits.

With the help of family, friends and an especially easy to please bank loan officer, Gina buys a run down beauty shop in a questionable part of town. The shop comes equipped with a noisy neighbor/potential love interest (Djimon Hounsou), bad electricity and a staff of oddball stylists not used to Gina's more upscale tastes. Among her new employees are the former owner, the Maya Angelou quoting Miss Josephine (Alfre Woodard, looking uncomfortable in this rare comedic role), Chanel (Golden Brooks) the requisite attitude problem or more precisely the bitch, and Ida (Sherry Shepherd) the dim witted one.

Thankfully also coming along with Gina from Jorge's is a talented stylist named Lynn (Alicia Silverstone, stymied with a bad southern accent), the one white girl in an all black shop. Lynn naturally is at the center of much of the film's uncomfortable racial humor.  On the bright side for Gina, some of the upscale clients from Jorge's have followed her, including the sweet natured Terri (Andie McDowell) and the bitchy Joanne (Mena Suvari).

The film's plot centers on finances as the shop, as it was in the Barbershop movies, is constantly in dire financial straits. Everything is falling apart, the electricity is bad and a nasty building inspector seems to have it out for Gina. That said, though, the plot is very much secondary to the interaction of this over-the-top group of characters and is not the film's strong point.

The one thing the film has going for it is the star presence and charisma of Queen Latifah whose common sense straight man never really gels with the caricatures that surround her. That is certainly not Latifah's fault.  She seems dead on throughout, especially in her romance with Djimon Hounsou's character, Joe. Though Hounsou never seems comfortable with the comedic part of his role, he does know how to handle the quiet romantic scenes and had they been given the chance these two actors could have done something very interesting.

Unfortunately there are too many other things going on in Beauty Shop for Queen Latifah and Djimon Hounsou to really connect. Music video Director Bille Woodruff (Honey with Jessica Alba) is too caught up with his quirky characters to give Latifah the attention she deserves. Queen Latifah is radiant and funny and a director with more imagination than Mr. Woodruff might have forgotten about trying to make Barbershop 3 and focused the film on Gina and her romance with Joe.

I really cannot say enough nice things about Queen Latifah, it's a shame that the producers of Beauty Shop did not like her as much as me. If they did, they might have forgotten about cloning the Barbershop movies around her and instead allowed the story to focus more on romantic comedy and less on rehashed characters and jokes. Queen Latifah deserves better and we in the audience especially deserve better.