Movie Review: Bitch Slap

Bitch Slap (2010) 

Directed by Rick Jacobson

Written by Rick Jacobson

Starring Julia Voth, Erin Cummings, America Olivo

Release Date January 8th, 2010 

Published August 4th, 2010

Checking the credits on Bitch Slap you find all the right credentials for a low budget exploitation flick. The director/producer worked for Roger Corman and Rob Tapert (Xena Warrior Princess) at different times in their careers. The cast includes one actress credited as Dubai Girl in Iron Man and another who starred in something called After Midnight: Life Behind Bars.

Those credits inform you well of what you are getting into in Bitch Slap a low budget girls and guns epic of exploitation badness. Accept it on those terms and enjoy, intellectualize it too much at your peril and disappointment.

Erin Cummings leads the cast of Bitch Slap as Hel, an undercover agent of some sort ostensibly seeking a diamond stash with her criminal cohorts Camero (America Olivo) and Trixie (Julia Voth) but really seeking a dangerous weapon wanted by terrorists. The three have kidnapped an arms dealer (Michael Hurst) and as we join the story they are removing him from the trunk.

The set up is terrific with each of the girls in various forms of fetish wear, high heels and fishnets for Hel, go go dancer mini-dress for Trixie and a ripped up tiny t-shirt and leather boots for Camero. They arrive in the hot, sweaty desert in a black muscle car with Camero packing heat and looking for a fight, Hel with her dominatrix carriage and Trixie perfectly bubble brained.

From there the girls engage in water fights, for no other reason than that there are buckets of water and the ladies look sexy wet and rolling around together, some lesbian groping, did I mention that all three girls are lesbians? And, eventually gunplay and one of the sickest girl on girl fight scenes in film history.

The plot is entirely unimportant, the film sets out to be exploitation and taken at that level it works as camp mindlessness and minor masturbatory fantasy for the teens who find it someday on late night cable. Bitch Slap is everything its creators set out to make and in that it works brilliantly.

One could ask about how exploitation movies fit into a more permissive modern society or, as the Los Angeles Times asked back in January during the film's modest theatrical run, wonder about whether Bitch Slap empowers or merely exploits women but such conversations are unimportant in relation such minor league ridiculousness as Bitch Slap.

The film exist solely as titillation and as such is successful, especially during the film's centerpiece a seemingly endless ultra-violent chick fight that rumbles past exploitation into a sort of fetishistic violence that will either make you laugh or, more disturbingly, turn you on.

I don't know if I was turned on by Bitch Slap, aside from how completely gorgeous the three leads are, but I definitely laughed. Bitch Slap has modest means and modest expectations and exceeds them effortlessly. For fans of Roger Corman, Russ Meyer, Sin City and Quentin Tarentino, Bitch Slap is silly fun, worthy of a rental with friends and lots of beer.

Movie Review Leap Year

Leap Year (2010) 

Directed by Anand Tucker

Written by Harry Elfont

Starring Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, Adam Scott 

Release Date January 8th, 2010 

Published January 8th, 2010

The women's liberation movement in the universe of film consists of empowering women economically; they all get fabulous jobs in fashion or real estate or owning uncommonly successful restaurants. The liberation stops however once they have found a man. Such is the case of the new romantic comedy Leap Year starring the plucky Amy Adams.

Adams stars in Leap Year as Anna whose job is setting up apartments for sale. She doesn't sell the apartments; she merely dresses them for sale and makes fabulous amounts of money doing it. In a rare twist, Anna has already met a man, Jeremy (Adam Scott), who shares her love of status symbols and just the right apartment.

Anna and Jeremy have been together four years and just before he leaves for Ireland on a business trip Anna gets in her head that he is finally going to propose to her, so convinced that she and a friend actually practice being surprised when he asks. No surprise to anyone who's seen the film's trailer, Jeremy doesn't ask and Anna is briefly devastated.

After Jeremy's left a plan is hatched, Anna will fly to Ireland just in time for Leap Day, February 29th, a day in Irish tradition when a woman can ask a man to marry her. Now, the liberated woman of today might ask why a holiday is needed for a woman to ask a man to marry her. The makers of Leap Year ladies are unconcerned with such questions.

The leap day thing is merely a device to propel Anna on a madcap dash to Dublin. First her plane is diverted to Scotland then she gets stranded in an Irish village called Dingle where she seeks a ride from one of the locals. The only driver available is also the local pub and hotelier, Declan (Matthew Goode).

Surprise, surprise, Anna and Declan immediately choose to dislike each other. She's a shrewish, entitled bitch and he's easygoing, handsome charmer with a secret reason for not trusting women. If your eyes weren't rolling through the back of your head as you read that you have more self control than I.

So, off they go on a trip across the Irish countryside arguing and uh-oh falling in love with all of the requisite dopey rom-com roadblocks checked off like a shopping list at a cliché outlet. No surprise then to learn, the script comes from the makers of Made of Honor and Josie and the Pussycats.

We all know how this will end, anyone who’s seen the trailer for Leap Year knows how it will end. It's a romantic comedy and experience tells us that it is the journey and not the destination when it comes to the modern rom-com. Sadly, the journey in Leap Year is mostly tedious.

I say mostly tedious because along the way, though all the predictable beats are there, somehow a few grace notes sneak in. A script polish by Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy likely brought the scene where Anna and Declan clash at a wedding and then share a romantic walk in Dublin before she meets up with Jeremy.

These few good scenes however cannot make up for the inept series of clichés that precede them. Add to that the anti-feminist vibe of the whole thing. In the end, after all of the predictable crap plays out Anna throws everything away, the job she loved, the things she worked hard for just so that she can live the life of a doting wife. Yes, she's in love but why does that require her to give up all that she was.

Leap Year is yet another movie that falls back on supposed traditional values, the lazy notion that true fulfillment for a woman can only come in a traditional marriage, their hopes and dreams be damned.  . Don't be mistaken, choosing to be a wife and mother is as feminist as getting into the rat race but when a character is presented like Anna as having her own life and job, a genuine career that she appears to love and be quite good at, that the movie simply has her chuck aside for the desperate pursuit of traditional marriage, is this movie lazily reinforcing traditional stereotypical and anti-feminist values. 

I don't think the makers of Leap Year set out to undermine the notion of a working woman. Rather, I think Leap Year is a dimwitted comedy that lazily falls back on traditional gender roles because it's easier than trying to create fully fleshed out characters with lives of their own who have to choose to make compromises and sacrifices if they want to have a family and a marriage. Leap Year has no time for complexity or even a modicum of depth. And since the film also fails at being funny, there is little else to think about than how the movie lazily reinforces stereotypes. 

I realize that I am not supposed to care. I get that the filmmakers don't want to talk about this but the ignorance of these facts is a plague that infects far too many modern so-called romances. Leap Year is just the latest symptom of said plague.

Movie Review Righteous Kill

Righteous Kill (2008) 

Directed by Jon Avnet

Written by Russell Gewirtz 

Starring Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Curtis Jackson Carla Gugino

Release Date September 12th, 2008

Published September 11th, 2008

20 years ago people buzzed about the idea of Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino working together. 20 years ago, people would have lined up around the block and Oscar voters would salivate over the chance to vote for a Pacino-DeNiro teaming. 20 Years is a long time ago. DeNiro and Pacino did tease fans a little in their brief scenes together in Michael Mann's Heat but one could argue, with the length and breadth of that film. even with one scene together, they are barely in the same movie.

Thus Righteous Kill really is the first time Pacino and DeNiro, two of the finest actors of the last 50 years have teamed up. 20 since the teaming would have had relevance and buzz, Righteous Kill arrives after DeNiro has begun to lower his profile and work less and less and after Pacino has stumbled through a series of failures.

In Righteous Kill Robert DeNiro is Turk, a detective on the beat for years. Al Pacino is his partner Rooster and together they have done questionable things to get the bad guys. Lately, someone has been doing Turk and Rooster's job for them, hunting down and killing New York's worst of the worst. A series of murders where the killer leaves behind a poem referring to the crimes committed by the deceased.

Bodies pile up like cordwood and the evidence begins to point to a cop. In fact, the evidence seems to lead right to Turk. Rooster backs his partner, but even Turk's girlfriend (Carla Gugino) , a forensics expert, seems suspicious. John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg play a pair of fellow cops who also caught one of the poetry murders and come to suspect Turk.

I would love to tell you that director Jon Avnett takes this premise and uses it to keep you on the edge of your seat. I would love to be able to tell you that the plot is tight and lean and to the point but I can't. The fact is Righteous Kill is one of the sloppiest thrillers of the last decade. Though slightly better than Avnet's last teaming with Pacino, the abysmal 88 Minutes, Righteous Kill is as incomprehensible and ludicrous as any movie of the last decade.

Scenes pile up and go nowhere. Scenes of suspense and misdirection turn confusing and messy. Even as we are baffled by scenes that don't seem to make any sense, we still somehow are not the least bit surprised when the end arrives and the killer is revealed. Such is the botched effort of Righteous Kill, it's not even confusing enough to engender suspense from its own muddled nature.

As bad as Righteous Kill is, I cannot deny being compelled, ever so briefly, by DeNiro and Pacino. These two veterans, even far from the tops of their game, are still so charismatic that their talent can shine through the morass of something as awful and convoluted as this. As the film devolves and the two begin stagey speeches that go nowhere, you can't help admire the skill and commitment of these two legends.

Righteous Kill is a sloppy, slipshod effort that tries and fails to capitalize on the presence of two exceptional actors. It goes to show that no matter how good the actor, no one can overcome bad direction, bad plotting and bad editing. Really, Righteous Kill is just bad everything. Even bad DeNiro and Pacino who need to be called out for indulging such an incomprehensible mess.

Movie Review Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road (2008) 

Directed by Sam Mendes 

Written by Justin Haythe 

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon

Release Date December 26th, 2008

Published December 25th, 2008 

I am beginning to wonder if director Sam Mendes is really just M. Night Shyamalan with neuroses. The career correlatives are compelling. They broke out together in 1999 with a pair of at least slightly overrated Oscar nominees, American Beauty and The Sixth Sense, and have ever since delivered diminishing returns.

Both directors are self consciously arty and humorless about their work. However, Mendes has yet to deliver something as career devastatingly bad as The Happening. Unlike Shyamalan's latest, Mendes' Revolutionary Road is merely bad, not a trainwreck.

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, our Titanic dream couple, are all growed up and sad as suburbanites Frank and April Wheeler. I call them suburbanites but Frank and April would chafe at such a label. No, despite the manicured lawn, lacquered grinning neighbors, and 2.0 kids, Frank and April are above the title suburbanite.

Or so they believe. One day, when April takes out the garbage and see's rows and rows of the exact same garbage cans on her street, she realizes that she is no different than the average, white wine in the afternoon suburban mommy. This desperate revelation inspires a wild idea for Frank's upcoming 30th birthday.

April wants to move to Paris. There, she will work and Frank can pursue himself, find whatever it is that he is. Too bad for April that Frank has given up their petty dreams and found himself a comfortable rut selling whatever a Knox 500 is. Though he initially goes along with April's wacky scheme, we know he is just playing the part of supportive husband.

We know from the beginning of Frank and April's blissful 'we're moving to Paris' phase that the rug will be pulled out from under them, the question becomes how. The answer is dramatic but also slightly inert. If you can't see where this is all heading, you're really not trying.

It's not that Revolutionary Road is devastatingly predictable. Rather, it is the way in which it is predictable. The choices that unfold and the way they unfold feel duly preconceived though we sense they are supposed to be tragic or moving. Each scene is pushily meant to symbolize Frank and April's alienation but each lingers on the point far past necessity.

Revolutionary Road is one of those films that feigns depth by dramatically being all things to all viewers. If you want to read anti-feminism or even misogyny into the work, you can. If you want to read the same suburban misanthropy of Mendes's American Beauty in Revolutionary Road, you can.

You can take individual scenes and characters and spin them off in wild, fictive fantasies of meaning and depth and the film can match whatever emotionally resonant thing you seek. For me, it all seemed an aimless mélange of sadness that relies heavily on stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and Oscar nominee Michael Shannon to give it any meaning whatsoever.

That each of these talented actors come close to delivering through the murk of Revolutionary Road is quite a feat. Winslet especially is swimming upstream as this irrational flibbertigibbet who could set the women's movement back 20 or 30 years with the power of her suburban angst.

DiCaprio is the most comfortable in his role. With his baby fat pudge evading his man-boy status without him having to say a word, DiCaprio settles in to delve deeply into Frank's fears and desires and nearly makes it all work. If only what was surrounding him weren't so aimless.

Finally there is Michael Shannon who earns every inch of his Oscar nomination. You can debate the necessity of his character. You can fairly question his role as that of a creative device employed to craft tension but you cannot deny his intensity and resonant power. In just three scenes, Shannon devastates and exits in unforgettable fashion.

Give Sam Mendes this, like his counterpart Mr. Shyamalan, his failures are memorable. Revolutionary Road unquestionably fails but it does so in ways that you will remember and discuss long after the film is over.

Movie Review Resident Evil Afterlife 3D

Resident Evil Afterlife (2010) 

Directed by Paul W.S Anderson

Written by Paul W.S Anderson 

Starring Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Kim Coates, Wentworth Miller, Boris Kodjoe

Release Date September 10th, 2010 

Published September 10th, 2010 

The idea behind each of the “Resident Evil” films is watching Milla Jovovich in states of undress or in exceptionally tight fitting outfits. Jovovich is a walking fetish for director Paul W.S Anderson and a legion of geek fans who flock even to the shoddiest made films to see the object of their lust.

Now, Milla Jovavich in tight leather and in 3D threatens to make going to see “Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D” something akin to attending a porn film with greasy, glassy eyed geeks under giant coats ducking low so what they're doing cannot be seen. Sure, there are zombies and guns, but if you can’t figure the true interest of the “Resident Evil” creators and fans, consider yourself naïve but also kind of lucky. I wish I didn’t know.

In this 3rd or 4th or who the hell cares numbered sequel in the video game to movie franchise, Alice (Jovovich) is in Japan seeking the headquarters of the evil umbrella corporation. They are the ones who invented the T-Virus that has turned most of humanity into flesh eating zombies while turning Alice superhuman.

Yes, Alice is infected by the T Virus but something makes her immune and adaptive and superhuman, thus she is perfect to take on an entire army of faceless corporate mercenaries. Oh, but Alice is not alone, in a move that will no doubt please the geeks in most disturbing fashion, Alice has been cloned and several of her are on the attack in tight leather jumpsuits.

That's just the opening minutes, once we've been whittled down to just the original Alice, we get to the much more dull story of Alice's travel to Alaska seeking her former friends and the search for a place called Arcadia that claims to be a disease free paradise filled with survivors and supplies.

Soon, Alice is reunited with Claire (fellow fetish object Ali Larter) and though Claire has lost her memory, they soon are traveling to Los Angeles searching for Arcadia and more survivors. The few they find are hiding in a giant prison surrounded by the undead. Boris Kodjoe and Wentworth Miller lead a ragtag bunch of cannon fodder destined to die horribly for our amusement.

The best of the supporting cast is not one of the survivors but rather a reject from another movie, a zombie giant with an ax/hammer he intends to use to crush all non-zombies. Where did this freak come from? Why is he killing survivors and not crushing zombies? Who knows, he makes for a cool visual and a strong foe for Alice and that's all that matters.

Sadly, the zombie giant ax/hammer guy, who looks like he wandered over from the unmade sequel to Silent Hill, is not the big bad in Resident Evil Afterlife. He's barely a foe at all, dispatched in a single scene with barely a fight. I wasn't rooting for the bad guy but he was the most interesting looking thing in the film, not counting Ms. Jovovich, and the film definitely loses something after his scene ends.

Don't let me overstate, the giant ax/hammer zombie dude is certainly not enough to recommend the dull slog of zombie goofiness that is “Resident Evil Afterlife.” There is no doubt that Milla Jovavich is completely gorgeous and looks amazing but this type of puerile interest cannot sustain interest in a full length feature and is really better suited to the privacy of home viewing, even without the 3D.

Documentary Review Religulous

Religulous (2008) 

Directed by Larry Charles

Written by Documentary

Starring Bill Maher

Release Date October 1st, 2008 

Published October 1st, 2008

I struggled for a very long time with atheism. There was a sort of emptiness to not having faith in something bigger. Confronting the world knowing there was no plan, no creator who could set things right if things went horrible was a frightening concept. It was only in the wake of 9/11 that I realized the whole god thing didn't make sense for me.

Bill Maher's new documentary Religulous is the perfect movie for me because it affirmed everything I have ever believed about organized religion. Part polemic, part comedy, all passion, Religulous will anger many and convert more.

The premise is not Bill Maher trying to convince you to give up your faith. Rather, he is curious about certainty. How and why can anyone be so certain about something that cannot be proven. A number of random Americans, some at a truck stop church in a converted truck trailer, then across the US and to Israel and Palestine give Maher reasons why they believe. This however, only sets Maher off further.

The question turns on the person answering it however. How can it be faith if you feel the need to defend what you believe with proof. Maher saves his biggest satirical bombs for a trio of easy targets. Arkansas is the home of the Creation Museum, a place where people can see paintings and sculptures of people in Jesus's day and age riding dinosaurs, which proves not the coexistence of Jesus and dinosaurs, but rather, Hanna and Barbara.

Then there is the Gay No More organization where Maher encounters a very confused man who believes he is former gay thanks to Jesus. In a conversation that last maybe five minutes the man contradicts himself on the issue of being born gay. Then Maher travels to a Christian theme park where Maher is the one nearly knocked off his high horse. Ever so briefly Maher is confronted by someone, an actor playing Jesus, who has a good sound reasoning for his belief buried inside a complex metaphor.

While Religulous is a grenade throwing polemic against organized religion, and quite a powerful one when it wants to be, it's also very funny. Watching Maher with his mother confronting when they began to drift from the church is revealing and sweet. Then there is Maher's interactions in the Vatican where he encounters a pair of priests who defy conventions and work for the Vatican.

One of these wonderful old priests is the Vatican's own science expert who blows up the idea of a creation museum. Even the Vatican thinks that's crazy. The other knocks his own church for its excesses and simply urges people to believe regardless of where or why. This gregarious gentlemen is no doubt a favorite of Maher's, interviewed right outside the Vatican, he laughs off nearly all of the hardcore believers in his urging toward a faith that doesn't require proof.

The final thesis of Religulous turns on the dangers and excesses of organized religion. It's about the need to check the beliefs of our leaders before we elect them. How religious beliefs can be a danger to the world when the powerful mix with the faithful. President Bush is an evangelical christian who believes the world will end in his lifetime. How do you figure that belief plays into his views on the environment? Or our current economic crisis? If you don't believe there is a future beyond your lifetime, what do you care if the thieves are robbing the temple? 

When Congress opens a session with a prayer, how many of those Senators are praying to a god they believe will return in their lifetime?

Can you trust a politician who tells you they can leave their faith at the door? How can you tell you at every turn how much their faith shapes what they believe? The next time a politician tells you they believe in the state of Israel shouldn't you ask them if they believe it is because the Jewish people deserve a homeland or because they believe that Israel is where Jesus will return and the Jews need to be there to be converted or die when he comes back?

These issues of the faith of our political leaders are dangerous to us all and need to be checked. Somehow it has become taboo to question people about faith. Thus, who better than the former host of Politically Incorrect to force the question.

Will Religulous give some people the urge to abandon their faith? Maybe. But if you are truly a person of faith nothing should shake that. The real, relative importance of Religion is to ask you to be smarter about faith and the faithful. There are inherent dangers in being blindly certain of just about anything. Blind certainty, blind faith, these are as dangerous to all as they are comforting to some. Bill Maher shines a light on these dangers and hopes that satire is the best way to illuminate them.

For those who think Maher is simply being mocking and self-serving , the comedian states clearly that he is not certain there is no god. Rather, he states plainly, he just doesn't know. He has a lot of questions and the people who try to answer them often only make things worse.

Movie Review Replicas

Replicas (2019) 

Directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff 

Written by Chad St. John

Starring Keanu Reeves, Thomas Middleditch, Alice Eve, John Ortiz

Release Date January 11th, 2019

Published January 11th, 2019

Replicas isn’t as bad as I assumed it would be. Instead, Replicas are just bad in a more bland and general fashion. Where I have spent the last couple of days praising Keanu Reeves’ blank slate approach to being an action hero, here that blankness is more dead eyed and bored. Reeves isn’t holding back to give the audience an avatar, he’s checked out in the way that big time actors can tend to check out when they are just collecting a paycheck.

In Replicas, Keanu Reeves stars as Bill, a big shot scientist attempting to copy a human mind into a computer. We watch as a dead body arrives having only died hours before. This dead man volunteered to have his brain mapped and attempted to be copied and put into a robot. Unfortunately, the man’s mind rejects the robot body, even going so far as to try and punch its own mind out.

With this failure it appears that Bill might lose his job and the company itself may go out of business according to Bill’s boss, Jones (John Ortiz). Meanwhile, Bill is leaving on vacation that same day. Bill’s family are going to take out a boat owned by Bill’s co-worker Ed (Thomas Middleditch) but unfortunately, on the way to the boat, Bill and his family are in a car wreck that kills Bill’s wife (Alice Eve) and their three children.

Devastated in the immediate aftermath of the accident, Bill doesn’t contact the authorities. Instead, he calls Ed and has him bring his brain mapping equipment. Bill then sets about copying the minds of his wife and children as he did the dead man in his experiment. You might assume from this that he is going to make robot copies of his family, given that is what has been introduced already but you would be wrong.

Turns out, Ed is an expert in cloning and Bill wants Ed to clone his dead family. The two then set about stealing 4 million dollars worth of company property and taking three cloning pods and various genetic materials to Bill’s home. They do this despite the security protocols the script setup prior to this scene. Ed tells Bill that in 17 days, if all goes well, he will have three members of his family back but it will be up to him to choose which three and whether he can give them the memories and personalities they once had.

Have you got all of that nonsense because the film is so convoluted you might need to take notes. And yet, the film is equally as empty headed as it is overcomplicated. Keanu Reeves could not possibly care less about this movie. Take for instance the car wreck aftermath scenes. Keanu reacts to the death of his family with the same level of concern one might have for being cut off in traffic, he appears aggravated with a touch of confusion.

Middleditch meanwhile has exactly zero chemistry with Reeves despite the two apparently being close friends, according to the script. Middleditch is a mess of tics and awkward attempts at humor and while it is similar to his work on HBO’s Silicon Valley it doesn’t fit the serious tone cultivated by director Jeffrey Nachmanoff, a television veteran whose only other feature was the similarly sedate and confused Traitor in 2008.

Nachmanoff also wrote the screenplay for the similarly overstuffed The Day After Tomorrow. Much like that film, Replicas is a jumble of competing ideas. We start with a robot and then leap over to cloning. The cloning is relatively meaningless as it only leads to a series of action movie confrontations and a chase scene. The clones wind up being a plot driver but there is little consequence to the clones as characters.

Alice Eve is completely wasted in the role of wife and clone wife. The young star who made a strong impression in Star Trek a few years ago has almost zero presence in Replicas. You might expect from this premise that the clones would have a sinister air, perhaps a Twilight Zone like consequence, but no, they’re just perfect copies of Bill’s family, minus his young daughter because he only had three pods.

The film tries to mine some depth from Bill erasing his youngest daughter from the clones’ memories but Keanu Reeves can’t be bothered to express any genuine angst over this development and thus we don’t care much either. Much like how he reacted to the death of his family, Reeves’ Bill appears mildly befuddled by the decision to erase his daughter. Then, with no build up or drama, he eventually just tells his wife she’s a clone and that he erased their daughter. What should have been an important moment plays like Bill admitting he was the one who ate the last of pudding pops.

Replicas are really dopey but, to be fair, I was expecting a trainwreck. The film’s trailer and marketing campaign made the film appear to be something akin to a Tommy Wiseau movie, minus the charm. Keanu Reeves is bored, Thomas Middleditch is irksome and Alice Eve is absent. Replicas are forgettably bad, just competent enough for it to slip your memory just as quickly as you leave the theater.

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.