Movie Review Redbelt

Redbelt (2008) 

Directed by David Mamet

Written by David Mamet

Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alice Braga, Randy Couture, Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay

Release Date May 9th, 2008 

Published June 14th, 2008

David Mamet is one of the best screenwriters in the business. His hard boiled dialogue and twist filled suspense stories are often so layered it takes multiple viewings to discern. It is Mamet's reputation for quality work that makes his latest writer/director effort Redbelt so puzzling.

The story of a martial arts instructor drawn into a con that leads him into competing in a Mixed Martial Arts tournament has the requisite Mamet dialogues and twists but lacks suspense. Redbelt lacks suspense not because of a lacking script but rather it's shoddy, off putting craftsmanship.

Redbelt looks and feels as if it were slapped together on a deadline and shoved into theaters well before it was ready. Takes drag on too long. Dialogue sounds as if different scenes were cut together at random. Strong actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emily Mortimer seem at a loss to find motivation and guiding principles for their performances.

In Redbelt Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a struggling martial arts instructor whose unique style is co opted by an actor played by Tim Allen. The actor wants to learn from the instructor and use his style in a movie. What looks like a windfall however becomes a double cross when the actor's manager played by Joe Montegna steals the instructors teachings and sells them to a shady pay per view fight promoter (Ricky Jay).

To win back what he lost, the instructor must take part in a tournament and win it all.

As I said, Redbelt has the elements that Mamet does so well. The problem is in the slapdash production. The look of the film is amateurish at times with odd angles and fuzzy cinematography. The editing is downright confusing with actors often seeming as if their conversations were cobbled together from different scenes.

Stunningly poor production dooms what otherwise might have been classic Mamet in all his  manly, foul mouthed glory.

Movie Review Rebound

Rebound (2005)

Directed by Steve Carr

Written by Jon Lucas, Scott Moore

Starring Martin Lawrence

Release Date July 1st, 2005 

Published July 2nd, 2005 

Director Steve Carr has a resume only a mother could love. From the dregs of Eddie Murphy's career, Dr. Doolittle 2 and Daddy Day Care, to the Chris Tucker free, as well as laugh free, Next Friday. For his latest flick, Rebound, Carr finally found a family movie Eddie Murphy could turn down. Call on the B team, Murphy's apparent new understudy Martin Lawrence. Desperate for a hit, Lawrence has turned to the genre to which Eddie sold his soul, the mildly offensive utterly forgettable family film.

Worse yet Rebound is a formula sports film with the requisite team of misfits who overcame odds to be champions. Ugh!

In Rebound Martin Lawrence plays coach Roy McCormick, a hotshot in either college or the pro's, the scripting is so poor we are not sure where Coach Roy is from. What we do know is that his ego is out of control. Coach Roy misses games for magazine photo shoots and his out of control temper, think Bobby Knight edited for a PG rating, have gotten him thrown out of the league.

There was an incident with a bird but the less said about that the better.

Lucky for Roy his agent; Tim Fink (Breckin Meyer), get it FINK (that joke would have killed on Happy Days), has found him a loophole. If Coach Roy can find another job and show himself to be a model citizen he can get back in the league. Enter the Smelters; a ragtag bunch of middle school ballers who are so bad they have not scored a point in a game, forget winning one.

The kids are somehow able to fax an offer directly to Roy's agent and he immediately accepts the job. The kids happen to attend Roy's old school where he first fell in love with the game. Golly; maybe Roy can find his love of basketball again and learn a valuable lesson about teamwork. And wouldn't you know it, one of the baby ballers happens to have a sexy single mom (Wendy Raquel Robinson) who has been assigned to keep an eye on Roy by the school's lackadaisical principle (Megan Mullally, far too talented for this).

If this sounds almost exactly like Mighty Ducks or 2001's long forgotten Hardball with Keanu Reeves or even the original Bad News Bears well; I gather it's supposed to. There is apparently someone in Hollywood in charge of recycling this plot every couple years when a down on his luck star needs a paycheck fast or when a young hack Director needs a product to pad his resume.

Director Steve Carr has the visual imagination of a blind squirrel. I take that back, a blind squirrel might get lucky and find something interesting to film once in a while, I hear they occasionally find a nut. Carr does have a handle on this genre's newest innovation, bathroom humor. In his Dr.Dolittle 2 it was animal noises, Daddy Care Care poo poo jokes and in Rebound we have a child who vomits under pressure.

Children apparently enjoy these jokes but a long term study of the effects of this type of humor on children finds our kids getting dumber and dumber every year. Something must be done damn it!

I am certain that Martin Lawrence was once funny. I remember laughing at something he did. It's just been a long while since Martin has done anything entertaining. His last few films are so abysmal that just listing them raises the bile in my throat. What's The Worst That Could Happen, Black Knight and National Security are cinematic flotsam that mark one of the worst career trainwrecks in Hollywood history.

That Rebound somehow manages to be even worse than what has come before in Lawrence's career is a stunning result. However, indeed it is worse and blindingly so. There is just nothing of any redeeming value in Rebound right down to the poor child actors. Not one of these supposed cute kids makes an impression beyond a vague sympathy for the fact that each will carry this pock mark on their resume the rest of their careers.

Formula filmmaking at its most insidious, Rebound makes me sad to be a film fan. If this is how Hollywood repays the loyal filmgoer it is no wonder that ticket sales are lower than expected. Forget cell phones, ticket prices, or people who talk during movies, the reason fewer people are going to the movies is garbage like Rebound that takes up space in so many multiplexes.

Movie Review Joker

Joker (2019) 

Directed by Tod Phillips

Written by Tod Phillips

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy

Release Date October 4th, 2019

Published October 3rd 2019

Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix as the sad, damaged, mama's boy Arthur Fleck, who will one day in the near future snap and become the deranged criminal mastermind known as Joker. When we meet Arthur however, he's working as a sign twirling clown and it appears the world has it out for him. Not only is Arthur robbed of his twirling sign, he winds up beaten silly by the thieves and then told that he needs to pay for the broken sign. 

At home, Arthur's mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), insists that he check the mail incessantly for a response from Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), her former employer whom she insists will come to their rescue and get them out of their impoverished hovel of an apartment. That letter never comes, while Thomas Wayne appears to be entering the political arena, running for Mayor of Gotham City and promising to rid the streets of the criminals and the trash. 

Arthur doesn't care much for politics, everyday life is a challenge enough for Arthur whose dreams of becoming a stand up comic are made poignant and tragic by his long term neurological issue. Arthur has a condition, likely developed from a head trauma, that causes him to laugh inappropriately and uncontrollably and rarely when called for. His condition renders his dream of becoming a stand up comedian darkly ironic and eventually humiliating. 

Arthur is obsessed with many things but one that stands out is the Murray Franklin Show. Murray Franklin (Robert DeNiro) is the Johnny Carson of Gotham City, a television lifer who uses Sinatra's That's Life as a catchphrase and calling card. The two cross paths in person when Murray begins showing a video of Arthur's failed stand up gig and poking fun at Arthur. At this point, Arthur has lost his job, has murdered three men on a subway car after they attempted to beat him to death, and has gone off the medications that keep his delusions in check. 

This is what Murray does not know when he decides to book Arthur on his talk show and let the kid show he's a good sport by taking Murray's jibes in stride and in person. This is the final set piece of Joker and by far the strongest and most shocking element of the movie. If the rest of Joker had the power and fierceness of this moment, which fuses Joaquin Phoenix's real life talk show persona with the spiraling terror of the Joker persona for an extra kick of discomforting energy. 

Unfortunately, it's all downhill from here. Joker is an empty exercise in nihilism and troll culture. As directed by Todd Phillips, Joker mocks the audience by being all things to all audiences while not having a meaning of its own. The film uses a structure involving an unreliable narrator and the device is so clumsy that by the end, the filmmakers can use that unreliable narrator as a gimmick to deflect any reading of the movie, rendering the whole an empty shell and robbing the power from Joaquin Phoenix's performance. 

If you want to see Joker as a call to violent uprising against the rich, you can read it that way. If you want to see Joker as a critique of what is lacking in American healthcare, you can read it that way. If you want to read Joker as a critique of the policies of the Trump administration or as the ballad of the incel community or the most savage take-down of the policies of Elizabeth Warren, you can probably find all of that in Joker as well because the movie has no meaning of its own. 

I get that perhaps the movie intends to pose Joker as a mirror held up to society to reflect whatever society wants to see but I can't see what is intended to be entertaining or even interesting about such a taunting and trolling of the audience. Most people probably won't mind because the movie, and especially Joaquin Phoenix, looks cool while all that is going on, but the cool factor wore out pretty quickly for me once the cop out of an ending arrived and the unreliable narrator wiped most of the movie away in one fell swoop. 

I don't hate Joker, much like another nihilistic and childish swipe at those who choose to believe in things, Team America World Police, I just don't care. I find such intellectual dishonesty and trolling exhausting and thus I find Joker and the discourse surrounding it wearying. I no longer care. I suffered this movie and its arrogant, aggrandized taunting and I am glad its over.

Movie Review: Angry Birds 2

Angry Birds 2 (2019) 

Directed by Thurop Van Orman 

Written by Peter Ackerman 

Starring Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader 

Release Date August 14th, 2019 

Published August 14th, 2019

Angry Birds 2 is a significant improvement over the original. The first Angry Birds in 2016 was not terrible but it was plagued by the notion that it was a mercenary effort that was solely capitalizing on the hit app game. That was an accurate assessment but the creative team and the actors did make some of Angry Birds palatable with some solid jokes and a reasonably logical narrative. 

Three years later the app game is pretty much a relic and the creative team behind Angry Birds 2 don’t have nearly as much of the burden of being mercenary or soulless. With distance from the game, we can focus on big jokes and these likable characters voiced by talented stars. It may still be a minor effort, but Angry Birds 2 justifies its own existence by garnering way more laughs than you expect. 

Angry Birds 2 picks up the story of the Angry Birds and their rival green pigs as both islands continue to prank each other via their oversized slingshots. Red (Jason Sudeikis) is basking in the glory of having rescued Bird Island from the pig onslaught of the last movie. Unfortunately, even as his heroic self esteem grew, his insecurity has grown as well. Red has a deep seated fear that the current esteem in which he is held could go away at any moment and the thought is keeping him from enjoying all of the positive attention. 

One night, after Red’s friends Bomb (Danny McBride) and Chuck (Josh Gad) drag him away from the beach where he stands watch daily, to go to a singles night for fun, a giant ice ball nearly hits the island. Another similar ice ball had just nearly crushed the pigs and their leader, King Leonard (Bill Hader) is having a fit. Leonard inadvertently triggers even more of Red’s insecurity by begging the Birds for a truce so that he can try to convince the Bird’s to team with the pigs to battle whatever is sending the ice balls. But all Red can think of is what he might lose if he isn’t defending Bird Island from the pigs. 

The ice balls are coming from an icy island somewhere in between the Pigs and Birds. The ice island is populated by Eagles and their leader, Zeta, wants off the island in the worst way. She wants to use the ice balls to run off the Birds and Pigs so she can take their islands for herself, her daughter, Courtney (Awkwafina), and all of Eagle kind. Zeta also has a long history with Mighty Eagle (Peter Dinklage), the fake hero of bird island. 

Will the pigs and birds be able to work together long enough to stop Zeta from destroying their islands or will her strange technology that captures lava inside of ice destroy both islands. If you think that is going to be a genuine question filled with any real tension then you are expecting too much of a silly, kids animated movie. The point isn’t plot in Angry Birds 2, it’s gags and the gags are, for the most part, quite funny. 

The creators of Angry Birds 2, director Thurop Van Orman and writers Peter Ackerman and Eyall Podell, have packed Angry Birds 2 with a lot of good natured laughs and big comic set pieces and most of those work. They are not reinventing the genre or anything but they do enough to get consistent laughs out of a property that for all intents should not be as winning and enjoyable it is. 

On top of the laughs, I became legitimately invested in Red’s identity crisis. No joke, Jason Sudeikis and the writers of Angry Birds 2 actually made me care about Red’s crisis, his deep insecurity. It is not something the movie lays on thick, but it is woven well into the story. Red doesn’t want to go back to being forgotten, bullied or looked down upon. The first film chronicled his unlikely hero status and Angry Birds 2 takes care to address how that story is playing out in the wake. 

Of course movie sequels should pick up story threads from their predecessors but given the episodic nature of so many franchises would anyone have noticed that Angry Birds, of all things, had let a few story threads fall away? It’s almost brave that anyone thought we cared enough about the first film to remember the plot, to have the nerve to make the repercussions of that plot central to the main character’s story in Angry Birds 2 is an impressive bit of continuity. 

As I said earlier, this isn’t rocket science and the makers of Angry Birds 2 are not reimagining the genre or anything. Instead, they’ve simply taken care to make a movie they can be proud of. It’s a movie that could have been given to many creative teams who might have slapped together some lowbrow, childish gags and market ready tie-ins for video games or toys and called it a day. 

This team however, appeared to actually care about their work. They crafted this story. They took care in casting the voice cast, which also includes Angry Birds newcomers Rachel Bloom as Red’s love interest, This is Us superstar Sterling K Brown and Leslie Jones as a fantastically silly villain. The team behind Angry Birds 2 had every expectation that they would take the easy road to an easy paycheck and instead they made a genuinely funny and compelling sequel that surpasses the original. 

Movie Review: Van Helsing

Van Helsing (2004) 

Directed by Stephen Sommers 

Written by Stephen Sommers 

Starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Will Kemp 

Release Date May 7th, 2004

Published May 7th, 2004 

When Universal Pictures decided to remake one of it's stable of classic monster movies, The Mummy, Stephen Sommers was a rather unlikely choice as director. Prior to that film, Sommers' only experience had come on a pair of low budget Disney family pics and the disastrous horror comedy (unintentional comedy) Deep Rising.

To the surprise of many in May of 1999, Sommers delivered one rollicking adventure flick that combined the classic mummy with Indiana Jones-style heroics. His sequel, The Mummy Returns however, was a completely different story. The sequel delivered what many had expected of the original, a big, dumb, loud, action movie with more special effects than real adventure.

Whatever your opinion of The Mummy Returns, there is no doubt the film was a hit. So it was no surprise that when Universal decided to revive a few more of their classic characters they would turn to their in-house blockbuster director to deliver a spectacle that would give the classic characters their fist blockbuster big screen treatment. The resulting film is Van Helsing, a 200 million dollar adventure that brings Dracula, Frankenstein and The Wolfman to the screen in ways fans of the classic characters could have never imagined. Whether that is a good thing is up to the individual viewer.

Hugh Jackman stars as Gabriel Van Helsing, legendary hunter of evil. Working on behalf of shadowy figures inside the Vatican, Van Helsing tracks down demons, warlocks and other evil forces that no one but he and the Vatican know exist. His most recent assignment was retrieve the legendary scientist Dr. Jekyll who sadly has been completely overtaken by his alter ego Mr. Hyde (Robbie Coltrane in voice only). The assignment ends badly, once again cementing Van Helsing's outlaw persona amongst everyone but his Vatican handlers.

After regrouping at the Vatican, Van Helsing is teamed with a Friar named Carl (David Wenham) to go to Transylvania where Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) is out to kill the last remnants of an ancient family of vampire killers. The Valerious family has hunted Count Dracula for centuries and now only Anna (Kate Beckinsale) and her brother Velcan (Will Kemp) remain. If Dracula finishes them off the family will remain in purgatory for eternity.

Count Dracula meanwhile is searching for Frankenstein's monster (Shuler Hensley) whose creation is linked to Dracula's ability to give birth to millions of Vampire babies (don't ask why, it doesn't matter). The monster is thought destroyed but hides out beneath the ruins of the windmill which villagers torched in an effort to kill him. Once Dracula finds him, it's up to Van Helsing and Anna to save him before Dracula can use him for evil. Deterring the rescue is Dracula's pet, The Wolfman, whose real identity makes killing him very difficult.

Stephen Sommers not only directed Van Helsing he also wrote the film’s screenplay and this is where the film gets into trouble. While Sommers certainly knows how to incorporate actors and CGI effects into a terrific action scene, his writing is more than suspect. His dialogue is full of plot-point-delivered monologues in which characters deliver backstory in entirely unnecessary speeches that stop the movie dead, if only for a moment, before the next bit of eye candy special effects kick in. Don't even try to make sense of Sommers' plot. He didn't bother so why should we?

Worse than that however are the liberties Sommers takes with the stories of these legendary characters. It's one thing to re-imagine Bram Stoker's aged Dracula hunter Van Helsing as a young stud played by Hugh Jackman, that is to be expected when your trying to turn him into an action hero. With the name change to Gabriel Van Helsing, it's usually Abraham, you could argue it's not even the same character.

It is however, the liberties taken with Count Dracula that are most disturbing. There is a reason why New Coke was a miserable failure. Why KFC does not screw around with it's 11 herbs and spices. Because certain formulas just work as they are and that is the case with Count Dracula. There is a reason the Count has been portrayed in the same way ever since Bram Stoker created him, it's because that is the most compelling and interesting way to portray the character. 

In Sommers' take on the character in the person of actor Richard Roxburgh, the character is a laughable mess that lacks any of the menacing or seductive qualities that made Count Dracula an icon. Roxburgh can draw nothing but derisive laughter with his over the top performance, unarguably the worst Count Dracula ever brought to the screen.

Frankenstein is just as bad, although his look is not bad. Sommers' take on the look of the legendary monster is interesting with just enough of a nod to the original combined with modern effects. However, when the monster speaks he loses all credibility. Yes that's right. The monster speaks! Has there ever been a Frankenstein's monster that chewed scenery like Jeremy Irons on a bender? Well there is one now.

Is the Wolfman even worth talking about? Not really. There isn't much depth to the character or much of any take on the backstory. Though there are new twists on the Wolfman's ability, he is according to this film the only being able to kill Dracula, so that's new. Other than that however, the character of the Wolfman is nothing more than a CGI cartoon much like the Mr. Hyde character which receives an inauspicious death at the beginning of the film. These classic characters deserve better.

Amazingly Sommers, as I mentioned earlier, does know how to shoot a compelling action scene. There are a couple of really good action scenes that combine the best of CGI effects and pure adventure fantasy. However, there are far more effects that just pummel the audience with non-stop visual razzle-dazzle. It all grows rather tiresome, especially at the film’s climax. I can't forget to mention Steven Silvestri's film score that, much like the CGI effects, pounds on the audience begging to be noticed, not a good thing.

I really liked the first Mummy film from Stephen Sommers and Van Helsing has some of that film’s spirit, especially in Hugh Jackman's heroic appearance. Sadly though, too much of Van Helsing reminded me of The Mummy Returns which was also way too wrapped up in it's effects at the expense of it's compelling characters and the adventurous spirit of the first film. A little more adventure and a little less effects and Van Helsing might not make for a bad franchise blockbuster. As it is, Van Helsing is yet another disappointing big, dumb, loud blockbuster lumbering it's way toward a huge opening weekend at the box office.

Movie Review: Darkest Minds

Darkest Minds (2018) 

Directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Written by Chad Hodge

Starring Amandla Stenberg, Harris Dickinson, Mandy Moore, Bradley Whitford 

Release Date August 3rd, 2018

Published August 3rd, 2018

I had really hoped that the phase of young adult dystopian drama had passed after the series of Hunger Games knock-offs tried and failed at the box office. I had a deep and abiding hope that after Maze Runner: The Death Cure, still among the worst things I have seen at the movies in 2018, had flopped into theaters I would not have to suffer another overwrought, portentous piece of young adult post-apocalyptic nonsense for a few years.  

Sadly, it’s only been a few months since the pain of the most recent Maze Runner sequel began to subside and already this pathetic sub-genre is back on the big screen. Darkest Minds is the latest young adult flotsam to try and cash in on The Hunger Games in hopes of striking box office gold. Here’s hoping it fails as miserably as the rest as Darkest Minds doesn’t deserve success, it deserves to be buried in a cold wet grave. 

Darkest Minds wastes the talents of young Amandla Stenberg, Rue from The Hunger Games, as Ruby, a teenager with a dark secret, the power to manipulate people’s minds. As we are told via generic news footage, teenagers across the country woke up one morning with remarkable super-powers and their parents didn’t know what to do about them. The only thing anyone could think of was to round up the kids and put them in camps to be studied or killed.  

Some kids are super-smart, others have telekinesis powers and still others have the horrific power to make fire shoot from their eyes and mouths like a kid whose had too many Smoking Hot Cheetos. Ruby belongs to a dangerous group of kids given the distinction or Orange for their ability to manipulate the minds of anyone they come in contact with. Ruby can Jedi mind trick people into doing her bidding, if she can learn to control her gift. 

After escaping an internment camp where she was set to be eliminated after they discover the breadth of her powers, Ruby briefly goes on the run with a freedom fighter named Kate (Mandie Moore) but when she appears to have a partner who Ruby envisions as a bad guy, Ruby runs away and finds herself in a van with a group of fellow teens with super-powers. Liam (Harris Dickman) is the leader, he has telekinesis. Chubs (Skylan Brooks) has super-intelligence and Zu (Miya Cech) can turn electricity into a weapon. 

Together they will seek out a utopia headed up by a legend named the Slip Kid, nicknamed for his ability to get in and out of the camps after being repeatedly captured. Naturally, the utopia will not be all it’s cracked up to be and it will be up to our heroes to point the way toward real freedom. Or, at least, I assume what the plot of Darkest Minds is supposed to be; the film is far more clumsy in execution.

Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson makes the jump from animated features to live action with Darkest Minds and you can sense the dutiful approach to making this as if she were assigned a task and not given a creative opportunity. There is a quality of let’s just get this over with to every scene in the movie and the rushed sensibility comes through in the look of the movie and in the performances that stem from a director picking up a paycheck. 

Amandla Stenberg is giving the role of Ruby her full attention but you can sense here also a dutiful if not deeply committed approach. Everyone in Darkest Minds seems to just want to get through this so they can get on with their careers in more interesting movies that aren’t mandated by the whims of a studio marketing department. You can almost hear the gleeful cry of the marketing team as they chant “Hunger Games Meets The X-Men” over and over and over as they frenzy themselves toward believing they have a hit concept on their hands. 

Darkest Minds is little more than an elevator pitch brought to life and colored in with derivative characters and expository dialogue. It’s unlikely that anyone who made this movie cared about it beyond making sure it wasn’t a full-on, career killing embarrassment. That modest goal is achieved, everyone here can rest assured that what they’ve made isn’t a complete embarrassment, it’s competent and forgettable in the way that will help as these talented people move on and forget that they ever took part in this throwaway nonsense. 

Movie Review: The Wife

The Wife (2018) 

Directed by Bjorne L Runge 

Written by Jane Anderson

Starring Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce 

Release Date August 17th, 2018

November 4th, 2018

Acting legend Glenn Close has wanted to star in The Wife, an adaptation of the bestselling novel by Meg Wolitzer since 2014. Now we know why her passion for the project never waned. This juicy role as the long-suffering wife of an insufferable literary genius, played by Jonathan Pryce, has thrust Close into the Academy Award conversation despite few people even knowing the movie existed prior to Close earning a recent Golden Globe nomination. 

The Wife stars Glenn Close as Joan Castleman, the wife of well-known author and renowned blowhard, Professor Joe Castleman. As we join the story, Joe receives a call in the middle of the night. It’s the Nobel Prize committee and they’ve called to inform him that his latest novel has been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. It’s certainly an honor to celebrate but as we watch Joan react to her husband’s good fortune, we get a strong sense that the celebration will be short lived. 

When we flashback in The Wife, we see how Joan and Joe Castleman met and it’s more than a little awkward. Joe was Joan’s literature professor at Smith College in 1956. The young Joan is portrayed by Close’s daughter, Annie Stark, providing a wonderful sense of verisimilitude. Joan was enamored of her older, married teacher and as we learn about Joe’s proclivities it’s not hard to imagine that Joan wasn’t the first student to have private time with the professor. 

Joan had aspired to be a writer herself as a young woman but gave it up in favor of being with Joe and raising their two children. That’s the story they tell anyway, what we will learn as this story unfolds is something far more messy, complicated and compelling. The Wife doesn’t have a ‘twist’ per se, but the way the story plays with our perceptions of this elderly couple and allows us to make assumptions before shattering those assumptions, is one of the fascinating and entertaining aspects of this wonderfully crafted film. 

Glenn Close is flawless in The Wife. At first it appears like a role she could have acted in her sleep but just as the story begins to build, she begins to reveal this character and it’s irresistibly compelling. Joan reveals more and more of her pain, frustration and anguish with each passing moment and does so with no histrionics, simply with her eyes, her inflection. She creates drama where we didn’t realize there was any and it’s magnificent. 

Each twist of the tale holds a new fascination in Close’s character. It’s easy to assume that you know what you think happened in the shared past of Joan and Joe but the way Close reveals it hides the plot mechanics, you don’t notice the story moving forward, you notice Close willing us all closer to the ending and a reveal and nothing terribly over-dramatic but just perfectly calibrated melodrama generated from her performance. 

The Wife is fascinating because Glenn Close and Joan are fascinating. Close invests a lifetime of experience in this character in a way that appears effortless. It’s one of the best performances of 2018 and in a movie that, even I, someone who is supposed to follow such things, was not aware of. It’s a revelatory performance and a great reminder that Close is one of our finest living actresses.

Movie Review: Colette

Colette (2019) 

Directed by Wash Westmoreland 

Written by Wash Westmoreland, Richard Glazier, Rebecca Lenkiewicz 

Starring Keira Knightley, Dominic West, Eleanor Tomlinson, Denise Gough

Release Date January 11th, 2019

Published January 12th, 2019 

Colette is a sexy, smart and informative story about a real life figure who deserves a proper remembrance. Sidonie Gabrielle Colette was incredible, a writer, an actress, a pure iconoclast in a time when iconoclasts were some of the most brave people on the planet. Those willing to stand up and be different faced jail, poverty, even death in Colette’s day, even in the supposedly freewheeling Paris of the 19th and early 20th century. 

Keira Knightley portrays Colette as a young woman who had the luck of actually falling in love with the man she was promised to. At the time, most people in Paris loved Henry ‘Willy’ Gauthier Villars (Dominic West). He was a massive personality. Willy was a cultural gadfly, a charming, thoroughly gregarious man of means who never failed to pick up a check and make eyes at every woman in the room, all part of endless cycle of marketing himself as a brand name writer. 

Willy wasn’t really a man of means however. He was actually mostly broke due to his dedication to drinking, gambling and his many attempts to impress women, including his beautiful, much younger wife. Desperately in need of more writing product in the pipeline, Willy finally turns to Colette, the one writer he doesn’t have to pay and won’t hold him up for a payday. When Colette delivers an immediate smash called “Claudette,” their problems should be solved. 

Colette however, isn’t interested in writing, especially in writing something that Willy would eventually take credit for. She wants to have her own life and as their two lives chafe against each other’s needs and desires, the story picks up into a whirlwind of sex and recriminations. When Colette falls for an American woman, Willy encourages it as a way to justify his own infidelity and as a cudgel to get Colette to continue writing. When he decides that he to must sleep with this woman, things begin to get nasty. 

Colette is an exceptionally well told story about young country girl, slowly becoming the woman she was meant to be. Keira Knightley is wonderful with her huge, expressive eyes and effortless wit, she brings forth a Colette that you could never doubt was meant to be a star. If there is one issue with Knightley’s performance it is that she is so much better than co-star Dominic West, an actor inferior in every way to Knightley. 

West’s performance works only in particular context. Willy is intended to be portrayed as a spineless shell and West definitely portrays that aspect. Unfortunately, he’s so lacking in every other aspect that I found it hard to believe that he was this beloved society gadfly. I especially found it hard to believe a woman as incredible Colette could stand this guy for more than a minute. We’d be talking about one of the best movies of 2018 if an actor half as talented as Keira Knightley were playing opposite her. 

Colette was directed by Wash Westmoreland whose previous film was also a showcase for an incredible leading lady. Westmoreland directed Julianne Moore in her remarkable Alzheimer’s drama, Still Alice in 2014. That film could not be any more different from Colette but, what they share is a dedication to showcasing a leading lady in a remarkable performance. Westmoreland has a tremendous eye for moments and both Still Alice and Colette have moments of remarkable power. 

Colette features a moment in which Keira dresses down West’s Willy so much you feel like the actor might not survive. Knightley’s fury is righteous and the emotion is a wallop. Knightley has been accused of being slight as an actress, a shot at her body type more than her acting in my opinion, but here, wow, she is ferocious. Her acting power is devastating and even though West is giving her little to work with, Knightley’s power still resonates. 

Colette is a brilliant showcase for an actress too often underestimated. I can’t claim to have always valued her but in looking back, I can’t think of a single film where she hasn’t impressed me. Even in her best known role, the Oscar nominated Atonement, I didn’t like the movie, but Knightley, I absolutely adored her. She makes movies less than her better and great movies like Begin Again or the criminally under-seen Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, she makes transcendent. 

The real life Colette was a remarkable woman, a brilliant bestselling writer and openly gay at a time when such things weren’t safe. In England she could have been prosecuted for living openly with the woman she eventually came to fall in love with and the two struggled in France, though less than they would have in other parts of the world at that time. Colette persisted and her talent won the day and the movie based on her remarkable life is a loving tribute. 

See Colette for Keira Knightley and appreciate Wash Westmoreland, a director who doesn’t work all that often but when he does, he knows to work with the right leading lady. 

Movie Review Superfly

Superfly (2018) 

Directed by Director X 

Written by Alex Tse 

Starring Trevor Jackson, Jason Mitchell, Michael K. Williams 

Release Date June 13th, 2018 

Published June 13th, 2018

Yesterday I wrote about Gordon Parks’ seminal 1972 film Superfly, a landmark of film and culture. Superfly 1972 influenced fashion and music that came after it and while it was never intended to glorify the lifestyle of drug dealer Priest Youngblood, the unintended consequence of the film was that Priest became an exemplar of an idea that had little to do with the film or the character and the message of the film was transformed from an observation of a character to a pop culture caricature.

That caricature gets a new coat of paint in the new Superfly from music video director, X. The new Superfly has some of the themes of the original Superfly and some of the style but it lacks the central thesis of Parks’ work which was dispassionate, observation of a character and not a movie that created heroes or villains or told a conventional story with conventional morality in play. The new Superfly has an interest in glorifying Priest Youngblood and in doing so, it misses the essence of the original.

Trevor Jackson, best known for his work on the series Grownish, stars here as Youngblood Priest, a reversal on the name of Ron O’Neal’s O.G Priest Youngblood. This Priest is a flashy, stylish but clever drug dealer whose approach to business is stealthy. Priest lives the high life with high fashion, money and cars but carefully avoids killing and the kind of profile that attracts the attention of the police.

Through his mentor Scatter (Michael K. Williams), and with his partner Eddie (Jason Mitchell), Priest has a comfortable existence hidden behind a wall of respectable businesses, including an art gallery run by his girlfriend, Georgia (Lex Scott Davis). Priest and Georgia also have a girlfriend named Cynthia (Andrea Londo), another spin on the polyamory of the original Superfly Priest who had two women as well though he kept them separated.

The plot of Superfly 2018 kicks in when Priest decides to go around Scatter and connect directly with Scatter’s supplier, a drug cartel headed up by Adelberto Gonzalez (Esai Morales). Priest believes he can move more product than what Scatter is giving him and he seeks a new partnership. Secretly, Priest’s plan is to turn a few million dollars into multiple millions of dollars and retire from the game altogether. However, with the cartel involved and a dirty cop played by former House star Jennifer Morrison getting involved, Priest’s retirement could be perilous.

Many of the story beats are the same as the beats in the original Superfly, but the 2018 model lacks the urgency and kinetic energy of the original. Superfly 2018 adds an unnecessary subplot involving a rival gang called Snow Patrol who dress all in white and like to make it rain at strip clubs. One member of Snow Patrol is jealous of Priest and through a series of accidents and misunderstandings an all out war begins to unfold.

This subplot is not needed and seems to exist solely for the aesthetic and the costumes. Snow Patrol is unique and stylish but they add little to the story and nothing that could not have been added either by the cartel characters, a more interesting addition to this story or the corrupt cops who provided the bad guys of the original film. That plot was knotty and scary and far more interesting in Parks’ take than anything in this Superfly.

The new Superfly truly goes wrong with its ending which seems to treat Priest as a hero rather than a real life character. Again, the thrust of the original Superfly was not making Priest a legend or a hero but to examine the life of a man like Priest, warts and all. Superfly 2018 takes the easy way out by trying to pretend Priest wasn’t such a bad guy and asking us to root for his escape. This approach is far closer to glamorizing the life of a kingpin than anything in the original in which Priest narrowly escapes with his life and money and may not have escaped entirely.

The original remains iconic, unique and influential. The new model is merely stylish and less accomplished. Superfly 2018 is not at all a bad movie, it’s sexy and well crafted aside from a couple of bad special effects scenes and some genuinely awful green screen. X is a director with good energy and the film has a strong aesthetic which includes modern fashion with nods to the garishness of the original. This version however, won’t stand the test of time as the original which has earned a place in pop culture legend.

Movie Review: Wonder Park

Wonder Park (2019) 

Directed by Uncredited

Written by Josh Applebaum, Andrew Nemec

Starring Brianna Denski, Matthew Broderick, Ken Jeong 

Release Date March 15th, 2019 

Published March 16th, 2019 

In January of 2018 Paramount Pictures fired director Dylan Brown from the animated movie Amusement Park over allegations of inappropriate behavior. Exactly what that behavior was we do not know. What we do know is that, more than one year later, Amusement Park, now titled Wonder Park, has arrived in theaters and it plays like a movie that was lacking a director. Now, that’s easy to say under the circumstances, but I genuinely feel that the movie lacks a rudder, a steady hand guiding the ship. Wonder Park is a sloppy amalgam of cartoon tropes without a strong through-line.

Wonder Park stars the voice of Brianna Denski as June, an imaginative young girl who spends her time dreaming up elaborate theme park rides that her mother, voiced by Jennifer Garner, whispers into the ear of her stuffed monkey named Peanut, voiced by Norbert Leo Butz, who creates them with his magic marker. Hours and days are dedicated to the elaborate design of Wonder Park which mom and dad, voiced by Matthew Broderick, allow to take over the entire home.

This is necessary as when June tried to bring Wonder Park to life outside the house, she nearly destroyed the neighborhood. June created a monstrous loop de loop roller coaster out of any pieces of free wood she and her friends could muster together. Naturally, things fly off the rails quickly and June and her friend Banky, voiced by Oev Michael Urbas, are nearly run down by a truck before crashing through every fence in the neighborhood.

Mom is upset but not too much and the two set about making Wonderland into their in-home project. This goes on until mom contracts plot cancer. Mom has to go away for a while to undergo treatment and without mom around, June doesn’t feel right continuing Wonderland without her. June takes down all of the dozens upon dozens of models she’d built and takes the many stuffed animals that featured in her fantasy and puts them all in a box in a closet.

So distraught is June that she begins to slavishly dedicate herself to her father’s health and well being. She fawns over him and questions his ability to care for himself until he finally decides that she should get out of the house. June is to be whisked off to math camp for the summer but believing that dad cannot possibly get by without her, June ditches the math camp bus and ventures into the forest intent on getting back home.

June is soon distracted when she finds a small piece of her Wonderland blueprint moving magically through the air. She chases after the scrap of paper and it leads her deep into the woods where she stumbles over the entrance to Wonderland. It turns out, her imagination had manifested in a real form and was thriving until recently. Suddenly, a black cloud appears to be sucking up all of Wonderland and appears ready to consume the last of her stuffed animal friends when June arrives.

Manning the park are Greta (Mila Kunis), a wild boar and de facto leader, Steve (John Oliver), a cowardly porcupine, Boomer (Ken Hudson Campbell), a narcoleptic bear, and Gus and Cooper (Kenan Thompson and Ken Jeong), a pair of woodchuck brothers always bounding into trouble teeth first. Together, they have been battling zombie stuffed monkeys in a war to keep what little of the park is left.

Where is Peanut? That’s a little touch of mystery that the film wastes little time giving away. I won’t spoil it here but the little weight given to Peanut’s apparent disappearance is pretty weak. It should mean something that the biggest avatar for June’s mom in this story is missing but instead, the movie trips over itself getting Peanut back into the story and undermines what I would assume would be the deeper meaning of his absence.

Wonder Park wants to be something on par with Inside Out, Pixar’s ingenious and emotional trip into the emotional and intellectual world of a young girl. Unfortunately, Wonder Park lacks any of that film's substance and nuance. The characters aren’t nearly as memorable and Wonder Park is not nearly as funny as Inside Out. Indeed, Wonder Park pales in every comparison to Inside Out, even the animation which is arguably the best thing about Wonder Park, can’t hold a candle to anything Pixar has ever created, let alone the masterpiece that is Inside Out.

Weak narrative structure, meaningless metaphors and a shambling pace are the kinds of things that a good director might be able to work out. Unfortunately, Wonder Park didn’t have a director to help iron out those problems or to even patch them over well. Without that guiding hand you can sense just how much not having a director affected the failed final product that is Wonder Park. This lack of a guiding hand even extends to something as simple as the title. Despite the fact that everyone in the movie refers to Wonder Park as Wonderland, no one bothered to change the title. The words Wonder Park never appear in the movie and stand out as a symbol of the lack of focus that plagues the entirety of this animated adventure.

Movie Review: Widows

Widows (2018) 

Directed by Steve McQueen

Written by Steven McQueen, Gillian Flynn 

Starring Viola Davis, Elizabeth DeBicki, Brian Tyree Henry, Colin Farrell, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall 

Release Date November 16th, 2018 

Published November 15th, 2018

Widows is one heck of a great movie. This firecracker of a suspense thriller isn’t just a rare occasion for women to stand at the front of such a genre flick, it’s just, as a movie, a really, really great movie. Writer-director Steve McQueen, whose 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture in 2012, says he’s been nursing a version of Widows for nearly a decade but finally felt that now was the right time to launch a mainstream feature after having established himself as an indie darling. 

Widows stars Viola Davis as Veronica, the wife of a criminal named Harry Rawlings who's just been killed during a heist. In the heist two million dollars burned up along with Harry’s corpse, two million dollars that belong to a gangster named Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry) who has decided that Veronica needs to be the one to pay him back. She has 30 days to raise two million dollars or something bad will happen. 

Harry has left Veronica one thing that might help her out of this situation. It’s a book length description of a five million dollar heist that appears fool proof. Veronica certainly thinks show as she begins to believe that she can pull off this heist if she can recruit some help. With the help of one of Harry’s few friends that didn’t die with him in his fatal job, Veronica approaches the wives of the men who died with Harry and tells them that Manning will be coming after them if she can’t pay him. 

The other women who lost their husbands are Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki). Linda lost her clothing store when her husband died deeply in debt. Elizabeth meanwhile is being pushed toward high end prostitution by her domineering mother (Jackie Weaver) now that her meal ticket husband is dead. Both are responding to Veronica’s threat but their circumstances are playing a role here as well. 

In the background of the heist is a battle for political power, also involving Jamal Manning. You see, the missing two million was intended to help Manning buy his way into respectability as the new Alderman of Chicago’s 18th Ward, a seat held by the Mulligan family for decades. Robert Duvall plays the aged Tom Mulligan who had planned on essentially gifting his ward to his lawyer son Jack but a political mistake has led to the redrawing of the Ward lines and left Jack with a contentious race against Manning. 

How the race for Alderman plays into the plot I will leave you to see for yourself. You can assume it’s about power and corruption but McQueen’s story is even more inspired than that. This a movie with strong plot mechanics and no wasted time or space. Widows is a movie that wastes little time on the extraneous even as it has a sprawling cast that also has room for Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya and Cynthia Eriivo as the final member of Veronica’s gang. 

The tight plotting also still has room for strong commentary on the state of politics and economics. One incredible scene transitions from Colin Farrell’s wannabe political scion holding a press conference in a rundown neighborhood and being questioned about missing money to Farrell and his campaign manager in his limo. This is an unbroken take where the camera doesn’t get into the limo, it remains outside on the front of the limo. 

We listen as Farrell complains about how he doesn’t get the respect he deserves, how he can’t stand the media and the situation his father created for him by not working with the Mayor. The visual is fantastic and the scene lasts about 3 minutes and in that time we go from a rundown neighborhood to Farrell’s well appointed mansion. The visual is powerful and evocative and the message of the movie could be contained entirely in this moment. 

Viola Davis is a goddess but the performance I want to highlight from Widows is Elizabeth Debicki. Debicki isn’t well known yet but this is a star making performance. She’s no mere pretty face, Debicki’s Alice is a victim of an abusive husband and a domineering mother who really finds her strength in going along with this seemingly insane heist plot. Debicki brilliantly inhabits a young woman finding herself in a bitterly smart performance. 

Widows is one of the best movies of 2018. It’s smart, exciting, and exceptionally well made. Steve McQueen is a masterful director who makes brilliant decisions in keeping his narrative tight and the pace quick but never too quick. Widows is a suspense thriller with brains and guts, blood, sweat and tears. It’s gritty with a touch of glamour. Widows is a movie for adults with a strong respect for the wit and intelligence of adult audiences. 

Widows is a must see movie.  

Movie Review: Uncle Drew

Uncle Drew (2018) 

Directed by Charles Stone III 

Written by Jake Kroell 

Starring Kyrie Irving, Lil Rel Howery 

Release Date June 28th, 2018 

Published June 27th, 2018 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Review: Wolf Creek

Wolf Creek (2005) 

Directed by Greg McLean

Written by Greg McLean

Starring John Jarratt, Nathan Phillips, Cassandra McGrath 

Release Date December 25th, 2005

Published December 31st, 2005 

Are there any words, in relation to movies, anymore full of shit than 'Based on a true story'. Take the term 'based on'. It's a term that means the instances depicted here on are free of the strictures of what really happened. The words state that what really happened is not as important as how the filmmakers are going to present it.

The term 'based on' could be applied to nearly any film. Deuce Bigelow could be based on a true story. After all there is such a thing as a male prostitute. That is all you need to base a story on. In terms of the horror film Wolf Creek the 'based on a true story' tag is part of the films charmng little ad campaign that attempts to portray the film as a new kind of horror film. A more brutal and realistic brand of horror free of the comic nature that overtook much of the genre in the era of Freddy and Jason and further free of the ironic, knowing humor of, what I call, the Kevin Williamson era, the Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer era.

The marketing campaign however, like most marketing campaigns, is a complete lie. Wolf Creek brings nothing new to to the genre. Despite its supposed basis on a true story, Wolf Creek relies on the common attributes of the genre. The film is about the re-creation and presentation of uncommonly brutal violence, sadism and death. Thus, it is no different from Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers or the masked man in Scream.

The stars of Wolf Creek are three previously unknown actors. Nathan Phillips is Ben, Kestie Morassi is Kristy and Cassandra McGrath is Liz. They are three party hardy pals taking a roadtrip through the outback to check out a famed tourist destination called Wolf Ceek crater.

In the midst of the desolate, dry, climes of the outback a meteorite hit and left what is said to be the largest crater known to man. The impact, is said by Ben, to have been equal to several nuclear blasts. It is an impressive sight as are a number of the gorgeous outback vistas and mountainsides in the film. The scenery is at times so lovely as to be nearly hypnotic.

After visiting the crater the trio find that their car will not start. After a few hours they are lucky to meet an outback dweller named Mick who offers to fix the car for free back at his camp. Unfortunately for our trusting trio, Mick happens to be a sadistic murdering psychopath and they are about to be subjected to some stomach turning brutality.

Written and directed by aussie Greg McLean, Wolf Creek wants to be an edgy new brand of horror that plays on peoples real life fear of being lost with no help in a vast possibly metaphoric wasteland. But in the presentation of its brutal violence Wolf Creek shows itself to be no different than any other horror film.

Most horror films are not about characters, storytelling or skilled filmmaking, they are about the ways in which violence is presented. Some films revel in the creative ways they can present a violent death (Final Destination, Saw 1 & 2), some are about the comic ironic ways of violent death (Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday The 13th et al) and some are about sheer brutality (Last House on The Left).

Wolf Creek falls into the last category and is nothing special in that right. The violence in Wolf Creek is no more shocking or horrifying than anything in Hostel or Last House on The Left. It is in fact lesser than either of those two films because its characters aren't as deep or interesting. Not that I am a fan of anything in either Hostel or Last House on the Left, but atleast neither of those films bored me the way Wolf Creek does.

The characters in Wolf Creek are the typical stick figure representations of real human beings that are typical of the genre. Just because the director is following these characters with a handheld digital camera does not make them any different from the camp counselors who line up to be shredded by Jason Vorhees.

This is where the based on a true story tag, I gather, is supposed to make the difference between Wolf Creek and typical horror films. By convincing us that what happens in this film may have happened to someone in reality, we are supposed to be more horrified. However, because violence and sadism is presented in the typically broad fashion of the genre its never believable as a reality.

It is factual that people have disappeared and are presumed dead, even murdered, in the vast wasteland of the Australian outback. The deaths however are likely no more elaborate than the average murder. The creators of Wolf Creek are not interested in presenting a realistic scenario of murder in the outback, i.e someone killed in the commission of a hold-up, a robbery or a car-jacking. A realistic scenario is not elaborate enough. So director McClean and his collaborators amp up the sadism and brutality as a cinematic convenience. A tacit admittance that Wolf Creek is merely a genre excercise and not an expression of true fears.

In being solely about the presentation of shocking (or not so shocking) violence Wolf Creek is merely typical of its genre.

Movie Review: Four Brothers

Four Brothers (2005) 

Directed by John Singleton 

Written by David Elliott, Paul Lovett

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese, Andre Benjamin, Garrett Hedlund, Terrence Howard 

Release Date July 1st, 2005 

Published July 1st, 2005 

The amazing John Singleton has, according to some, never lived up to the potential shown in his debut feature Boyz N The Hood. This perception is not shared by this critic. I have enjoyed all of Mr. Singleton's films, save his Shaft remake out of fealty to the original as much as a negative opinion of the filmmaking. His Baby Boy and Rosewood are extraordinarily underrated and even his most commercial effort, the car porn 2 Fast 2 Furious was at the very least high camp popcorn entertainment.

Mr. Singleton's latest effort, the revenge drama Four Brothers, combines elements of Mr. Singleton's artistry and commercialism better than any of his previous films. This ostensible modern remake of the John Wayne western The Sons Of Katie Elder, is stylish in its homage to classic westerns and the ouvre of Charles Bronson and brilliant in its sense of compelling violence and family drama.

Mark Wahlberg stars as Bobby Mercer, the oldest of four troubled adopted sons of the saintly Evelyn Mercer (Fionnula Flanigan). When Evelyn is killed in the midst of a convenience store robbery Bobby comes home to reunite with his brothers, Jeremiah (Andre 3000 of the rap duo, Outkast), Jack (Garrett Hedlund) and Angel (Tyrese Gibson). Soon after the reunion Bobby rallies his brothers to find the guys who killed their mother.

According to the cops, the friendly detective Green (Terrence Howard) and the shady detective Fowler (Josh Charles), Mrs. Mercer was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, soon after launching their far more extensive and violent investigation, the Mercer boys uncover a dangerous conspiracy that leads to the halls of Detroit's City Council and naturally to the city's top thug, Victor Sweet (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

Each of the four brothers is a fully fleshed character with backstories that include multiple stays in prison, the military and a litter of failed relationships. For Angel, returning to Detroit means rekindling a dangerous romance with Sofi (Sophia Vergara) that, while not the film's strongest plot, does provide much of the film's humor. Vergara is very sexy but underserved by a role that simply asks her to be needy and screechy when she is not needed to simply provide eye candy.

Hustle and Flow's Taraji P. Henson shows up in Four Brothers as Jerimiah's wife. Her role is limited to being constantly worried and put off by her husband's brothers and the trouble that seems to follow them, but Ms. Henson is a welcome presence for what little screen time she has.

Surprisingly there is no attempt to give Bobby a love interest, a choice that breaks the mold of typical screenwriting that always calls for the star to be paired with someone. That someone, more often than not in films so heavily infused with testosterone, is a functionary role, a mere plot point and not a character.  So it is a welcome relief that the filmmakers refrained from employing that tired device.

While some complain that a career as a genre filmmaker was not what they had hoped for in John Singleton, I think it suits him. Moreover it suits the genre film to have such a talented artist bringing such talent to bear on what is essentially B-movie material. It would be nice to see Singleton deliver another powerful drama like Boyz N The Hood or Rosewood, but I for one will follow Mr. Singleton's work wherever it takes him.

Movie Review: The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe

The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

Directed by Andrew Adamson 

Written by Ann Peacock, Andrew Adamson 

Starring Liam Neeson, Tilda Swinton, James McAvoy 

Release Date December 9th, 2005 

Published December 9th, 2005 

So much has been made of the religious elements of The Chronicles of Narnia that I expected Mel Gibson to direct it. With the films marketing campaign targeting churches and Walden Media producing, one might fairly expect a screed or religious tract. Thankfully this live action take on the epic novels of C.S Lewis is neither a screed or a tract.

In the skilled hands of director Andrew Adamson, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is an exhaustively exciting epic of wonder, imagination and technology.

Escaping the Nazi's nightly bombing raids in London, the Pevensie children, oldest son Peter (William Moseley) his brother Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and two sisters Susan (Ann Popplewell) and youngest child Lucy (Georgie Hensley) are sent to a large country estate owned by the eccentric professor Kirke (Jim Broadbent).

Trapped in this middle of nowhere mansion the children's natural curiousity leads them to search the innumerable rooms. In one room young Lucy uncovers a large wardrobe that she seeks to use as a hideout in a game of hide and seek. Once hidden in the wardrobe Lucy finds something extraordinary. The wardrobe is a portal to an alternate universe called Narnia. In her adventure Lucy meets an odd creature named Mr. Tumnus (James McAvoy) a faun, half human, half deer. Lucy bonds with Mr. Tumnus and she cannot wait to tell her brothers and sister of her discovery.

Not surprisingly, the older siblings believe that Lucy is imagining things but soon all are traveling through the wardrobe to Narnia and a meeting with destiny and prophecy. According to some helpful exposition, first from Mr. Tumnus and then from some helpful beavers voiced by Ray Winstone and Dawn French, the arrival of four human children in Narnia is a sign that will bring about the end of one hundred years of winter brought about by the evil white witch (Tilda Swinton).

The children's arrival also means the return of Narnia's rightful leader Aslan (voice of Liam Neeson). Aslan's return is met by the white witch and her army of thousands of blood thirsty half humans and other mythic creatures. Aslan's own army of similar half humans and woodland creatures meet the white witch on the field of battle and the Pevensie children must join the battle for there to be peace in Narnia.

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is an astonishing work of tremendous imagination. All credit goes to director Andrew Adamson who brings the same sense of excitement and delight to Narnia that he brought to both of the Shrek films. Adamson directs much of Narnia as if he were directing an animated film. The same limitless creativity that animators approach their material with Adamson brings to this pseudo-live action epic.

Many films with this level of CGI work tend to forget to do the basics of filmmaking right. Adamson, however, does not fall into this trap. Each element of filmmaking from the effects to the casting is spot on. Adamson manages this massive undertaking like a veteran director, which is a tall task considering that The Chronicles of Narnia is Adamson's first live action film. Before this film his only experience came directing the Shrek films.

Given the amount of CGI effects in The Chronicles of Narnia directing a computer animated film like Shrek was actually the perfect training ground. Considering that one of the problems Adamson faced while directing Shrek 2 was rendering his cartoon characters far too realistically, the real people of Narnia must have been a breeze in comparison.

Adamson's great achievement in The Chronicles of Narnia may be his striking attention to every detail of filmmaking. With all of this technology on display Adamson never loses focus on his actors and helps, especially his young actors, to draw out exceptional performances. The difference between a good director and a great director is a command of all aspects directing and, while it may be a little premature to call Adamson a great director, The Chronicles of Narnia is a great first step toward that title.

Adamson is aided greatly by a cast of tremendous young actors who nail nearly every beat of their performances. Especially strong is young Georgie Henley as Lucy. Henley's sense of wonder is captivating and watching her eyes light up at the sight of Mr. Tumnus and the many wonders of Narnia gives you a similar excitement. This is one of the most phenomenal performances by a child actor that I have ever seen.

While the remaining Pevensie children do not stand out as well as Henley, each has their strength. Skandar Keynes captures Edmund's sniveling selfish qualities early on and manages a strong redemption as well. Ann Popplewell as Susan seems to have been the casualty of the film's runtime. The few moments that Popplewell gets to establish Susan's presence, such as strong speech over the fallen body of Aslan and a late movie turn into an action heroine, work very well.

Finally, William Mosely as the oldest Pevensie child, Peter, has arguably the most difficult of the roles. As written, Peter is solely heroic and noble with little room for much of a personality. Moseley performs well as an action hero and his bravery in the final scenes is compelling even if Peter overall is a bit on the bland side.

Arguably the films biggest challenge and it's biggest success is the computer generated Aslan voiced to perfection by Liam Neeson. Narnia writer C.S Lewis was said to be opposed to any live action movie version of his Narnia tales because of a fear that the animal characters would look foolish. Well I cannot speak for Mr. Lewis, but I can say that Aslan is rendered as realistically as technology will allow and is certainly not foolish looking. Embodied with Neeson's thoughtful fatherly tones, Aslan is a deep and integral part of what makes The Chronicles of Narnia an outstanding film.

Aslan is not the only exceptional CGI creation in The Chronicles of Narnia. The beavers who guide the children through the middle portion of the film providing wise council and important plot points are equally as well created as Aslan. Also well made are the many Centaurs, Minotaurs and other mythical creatures of Narnia. One simply cannot find enough praise for the awesome, if at times slightly overwhelming, CGI creations in The Chronicles of Narnia.

While many will distract themselves with the religious subtext of The Chronicles of Narnia, the important thing to remember is how entertaining the film is. With its epic technology, budget and runtime, Narnia bears a fair comparison to Peter Jackson's Lord of The Rings trilogy and the four Harry Potter films. That Chronicles of Narnia not only stands up to such lofty comparison but exceeds, in my opinion, atleast two of the LOTR films in terms of entertainment value, is an outstanding achievement.

Yes, the religious subtext is there in The Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan's sacrificing himself to save the children is comparable to a Christ-like sacrifice. His eventual rise from the dead is obviously quite similar to the Biblical resurrection. But the subtext of The Chronicles of Narnia is only on these few occasions heavy-handed. For the most part, C.S Lewis's story is more interested in establishing its own universe and mythology. It is Narnia's own mythos that will matter as the series progresses into sequels and that will be what keeps audiences returning to it.

The Chronicles of Narnia could stand an injection of humor. At times the film takes itself far too seriously, almost to the point of parody. Thankfully, the beautifully captured images of the grandiose Narnia and the effervescent performance of Georgie Henley lighten the mood and help your imagination soar over the occasions when The Chronicles of Narnia becomes overly serious.

With Walden Media and Disney already committed to making Narnia sequels, the best review one could give The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is to say that I cannot wait for the sequel. Indeed I can say I am excited to see where director Andrew Adamson will take this other worldly adventure story, if in fact he is allowed to continues as the director.

I was not excited when I went in, I expected to be preached to. The Chronicles of Narnia does not preach or attempt to convert anyone. It is on a whole simply a very entertaining movie.

Movie Review: Abduction

Abduction (2011) 

Directed by John Singleton

Written by Shawn Christensen 

Starring Taylor Lautner, Jason Isaacs, Alfred Molina 

Release Date September 23rd, 2011

Published September 23rd, 2011 

How bad is "Abduction?" I kept trying to imagine the characters from the brilliant "Mystery Science Theater 3000" sitting in the row in front of me making the experience of "Abduction" tolerable through snarky commentary. "Abduction" is mind-blowingly bad from the action to the supposed suspense and especially to star Taylor Lautner who is entirely over-matched by this awful material.

Nathan (Taylor Lautner) is a below average High School teenager who, when we meet him for the first time, is riding on the hood of a speeding truck for fun. Putting aside the complete and utter irresponsibility of such an action, is this the best way to introduce a main character?

Nathan only gets dumber at a party where he gets blitzed and wakes up on someone's lawn. Again, why are we being introduced to our main character this way? Nathan gets picked up from the party by his angry father (Jason Isaacs) and his punishment is a fight, not a screaming match, an actual fight. Dad makes Nathan put on some boxing gloves and box while hung over. What does this have to do with anything? Who knows?

Eventually, the movie does get down to the promised business of Nathan finding his image on a missing children website. The site turns out to be a front for an international terrorist who has apparently been waiting 18 years for one kid to search one of several hundred websites for his own picture.

The terrorist wants to abduct the kid but first he has to find him, kill his parents and fend off some CIA folks who are also tailing the kid; Alfred Molina plays the CIA guy and does what he can to make his character interestingly ambiguous. Sigourney Weaver is less successful as Nathan's shrink with a secret.

Poor Lilly Collins, so interesting in "The Blind Side," so whiny and forgettable in "Abduction." The only way that "Abduction" might have worked is if director John Singleton had switched the genders of the lead characters and had Lilly Collins as the butt-kicking teen abductee and Taylor Lautner as the simpering sidekick/romantic interest.

Ok, there isn't really anything that could have made "Abduction" interesting. Director John Singleton is far too talented for a movie this bad and yet his name is on it. Singleton, who has in the past taken clichéd action stories and turned them into fun exercises in B-Movie cliches in movies like "Four Brothers" and "2 Fast 2 Furious" fails miserably with the same formula in "Abduction."

Taylor Lautner is, I am sure, a very nice kid. Unfortunately, his acting is blank eyed and stony. Lautner has the body of an action hero but the acting instinct of someone not being properly directed. Lautner's eyes are constantly searching for something off camera to reassure him of what he's supposed to be saying or doing.

"Abduction" suffers right along with its star, desperately seeking a direction and finding only one nonsensical situation after another. The plot of "Abduction" relies on more contrivances than your average direct to DVD thriller. Among the humorous low-lights: CIA Agents and bad guys who can always find the good guy no matter where he is or what he does yet act as if they couldn't find their keys with a map.

"Abduction" could be fun just as it is in the hands of Mike Nelson and the "Mystery Science Theater" crew. I am not half the snarky quipster those guys are and I managed to entertain myself thoroughly at the expense of "Abduction." I can only imagine the fun that a trained group of jokers could have watching this hysterically bad movie.

Movie Review: A Serious Man

A Serious Man (2009) 

Directed by The Coen Brothers 

Written by The Coen Brothers 

Starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed

Release Date November 6th, 2009 

Published November 4th, 2009 

Are the Coen Brothers making movies or conducting symphonies of word and image? On the basic level, of course they are movies. However, to the observant filmgoer, one truly engaged in the work of the Coen's, the symphony unfolds before them in remarkable movements that occur and recur over and over all the while deepening and expanding. It is a wonder to behold and in their latest masterpiece, “A Serious Man,” it is oddly, wonderfully exhilarating.

Ostensibly, we are watching a story about a put upon sad sack professor named Larry Gopnick. Poor Larry is stuck in a loveless marriage, could be on the verge of losing his job, has a pair of vile teen children, a lay about his brother and a pair of neighbors each offering their own trouble.

From a linear perspective we watch as Larry seeks the advice of local religious leaders, five different Rabbis from his local synagogue. Four of the Rabbis offer quizzical expressions of support, the 5th refuses to see Larry for reasons that never become clear. Again, that is from a linear perspective. Taken from a more abstract perspective each scene in “A Serious Man” offers dialogue that rises and falls, repeats and remits, furthers the story but doesn't. Moving the story along isn't so much the purpose as presenting dialogue and image that will eventually coalesce to an outlandish but highly effective crescendo.

Though the soundtrack bubbles with 70's rock standards from Hendrix to Santana to a special focus on Jefferson Airplane, the true musical expression of “A Serious Man” is as a symphony, a 104 minute epic symphony rising and falling, quiet then suddenly uproarious. It's a stunningly complex rhythm that few other filmmakers could match or even attempt.

The rhythm of a Coen Brothers movie requires an actor who can without question give himself over to the Coen style. Broadway veteran Michael Stuhlbarg does just that finding the perfect pitch for Larry Gopnick. Never over-playing Larry’s sadness while nailing his general apoplexy, Stuhlbarg captures the complexity of the Coen’s script while making Larry a simple, Jewish everyman whose life is suddenly one bad turn after another.

Much has been made of the Jewish aspect of “A Serious Man.” I cannot speak to the authenticity of how the faith is portrayed. I can tell you that Larry is a faithful man who even in his darkest moments, even as Rabbis repeatedly offer him little to know comfort from his problems, never turns against his faith. Judaism like everything else in “A Serious Man” is one of many repeated verses. It rises and falls on the Coen’s masterful melody.

For those who are not fans of the Coen Brothers, those who haven’t pored over the catalogue as I have and seen each film on multiple occasions, you may need to see “A Simple Man” more than once to get what I am talking about here. Fans of the Coens however, will absolutely flip for this coalescence of the Coen’s style into its most pure form.

“A Serious Man” is the synthesis of a style the Coen’s have cultivated since “Raising Arizona.” It’s a style they nearly perfected in “The Big Lebowski.” Listen to the dialogue, the ways in which it repeats throughout the film is intentional and each line is part of a bigger whole that won’t come clear right away. It’s not the lines themselves, taken individually they may be quite ordinary lines, but as they are reprised they blend into a whole that is very much like music.

Oh what wonderful music it is. “A Serious Man” is a symphony that works on multiple levels, a hypnotic rhythm, elegant reprises, humorous rises, dramatic falls, all the way to a biblical crescendo that, abrupt as it is, is really the only way it could end. “A Serious Man” is the best film of 2009.

Movie Review: Deuce Bigelow European Gigolo

Deuce Bigelow European Gigolo (2005) 

Directed by Mike Bigelow 

Written by Harris Goldberg, Rob Schneider

Starring Rob Schneider, Eddie Griffin 

Release Date August 12th, 2005

Published August 15th, 2005 

It's good to have friends in Hollywood. Look at Rob Schneider.  This talentless ex-SNL star has managed to land lead roles in mainstream Hollywood comedies thanks almost entirely to his close friend Adam Sandler. It was Mr. Sandler's clout that helped launch Schneider's first ode to bad taste Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo and then The Hot Chick, both films also featuring Sandler in cameos. Now with the release of Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo, Mr. Sandler has once again somehow duped another major Hollywood studio into bankrolling his buddie's career.

Deuce Bigelow (Schneider) was once a mild mannered aquarium cleaner with dreams of being a marine biologist. However, after an encounter with a gigolo (Oded Fehr of The Mummy series slumming outside the action genre), Deuce met T.J (Eddie Griffin) a pimp who convinced Deuce to become, in his terminology, a man-whore. From there the film wallowed in low humor and earnest sentimentalism before shuffling off to DVD with way more box office revenue than it deserved.

With the sequel Deuce has given up the gigolo life to once again work the aquarium biz, however after a bizarre encounter at the beach Deuce accepts an invitation from T.J to go to Amsterdam where the latter has become an even more successful pimp. Naturally the permissive atmosphere of Amsterdam is quite conducive to T.J's lifestyle, prostitution not only being legal but apparently a respected trade.

Unfortunately someone has taken to murdering T.J's stable of man-whores and T.J himself has become a suspect. Only Deuce can prove T.J's innocence, but to do so he must once again become a gigolo. Along the way he meets Eva (Hanna Verboom) and wouldn't you know it, she has a weird connection to the crimes at the center of the plot. Well I don't know if plot is the right word, this movie stretches the idea of a movie 'plot' to a breaking point. 

If I may make an odd comparison, Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo reminded me, in its sort of nihilistic approach to bad taste, to Rob Zombie's horror flick The Devil's Rejects. Both films are pointless and inane in ways that leave the viewer more indifferent than offended or sickly entertained. Both films play as filmed masturbation: kinky, desperate expressions of the creators' id. Both Rob Zombie and Rob Schneider seem as if they really enjoy their films with very little regard to whether anyone else would enjoy them.

Trashing Deuce Bigelow for its incoherence, its crudity or its ineptitude would be too easy.  Those failings are a given when one buys the ticket. A critic could write that review without having watched the film as far as I'm concerned. I'm left with my own fascination as to who is supposed to enjoy Deuce Bigelow and why. What type of twisted sense of humor do you have to possess to find a laugh in such desperate inanity? 

There is a kind of trainwreck fascination to the film that I can understand but I think that would be giving Rob Schneider's core of fans way too much credit. For some reason there are people who find this brand of comedy funny and for the life of me, I cannot understand it.