Movie Review Juno

Juno (2007) 

Directed by Jason Reitman

Written by Diablo Cody

Starring Elliott Page, Jason Bateman, J.K Simmons, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner, Michael Cera

Release Date December 5th, 2007

Published December 4th 2007

We've seen movies with smart ass motormouths and quick to quip teens. What separates Juno from characters of our recent, acerbic past is a performance by Ellen Page that simply rings truer than other similar performances. Page's Juno plays like a real teenage who happens to be savvier than most of the people she meets.  

Juno (Elliot Page) is just 16 but she has that typically movie worldliness that seems so rare in real life. Quick with a quip, Juno's wit belies a vulnerability that comes out when forced to confront her real feelings for her good friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). Juno and Paulie had danced around their feelings for each other in typical teenage gamesmanship until one night when each took things further than expected.

The sex was the kind that teenagers often experience, fumbling yet transformative on an emotional level. There is no real sex scene in Juno but visual and verbal allusions tell us all we need to know about the encounter. More important to the movie is the result of the brief encounter, Juno is pregnant.

Now she must tell her parents, Dad Mac (J.K Simmons) and stepmother Bren (Allison Janney) are both relieved and disappointed. The relief is that Juno hasn't been arrested or expelled from school, their initial suspicions when Juno when Juno sat them down for a talk. Their disappointment, typically parental, are concerns about her future and that of the unexpected grandchild.

After a brief flirtation with the big A, Juno is put off by a lone protester who tells her her baby already has fingernails, leads Juno to a more unique solution. The local Nickel Saver flyer has real advertisements for couples seeking babies. There Juno finds Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) a well to do yuppie suburban couple who seem like the perfect fit.

Looks are deceiving however as Juno bonds with Mark, a frustrated musician turned jingle writer, who longs for the days when it was just him and his band and his music. Meanwhile baby fevered Vanessa puts off all around her with her baby preparations and constant nervousness over whether Juno will actually give up the child.

Writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman wring some real surprises out of these characters whose lives unfold in a most unique and engaging manner. Holding it all together is Page's Juno whose vulnerability behind the quick witted bravado is the heart of the picture.

Page more than deserves the Oscar nomination she was recently rewarded with. The layers she brings to what could have been an overly familiar, too smart for her own good, teenage adult are quite surprising. The acerbic teen in movies more often than not sounds like a mini-adult with the writers of Seinfeld whispering in their ears. Juno too is quick with the quip but somehow Elliott Page makes it feel real.

She is aided greatly by a skilled supporting cast; that seem just the type of people who could bring about a personality like Juno. J.K Simmons as Juno's dad may not be hip and his wit is not as cutting as his daughters but his befuddled skepticism and earnest curiosity give a definite idea of where Juno came from. Especially when it's combined with the no nonsense toughness and good heartedness of Juno's stepmom played brilliantly by Allison Janney.

And then there is the exceptional Michael Cera who captures the awkwardness of youth like few actors we've ever seen. His Paulie is quirky and weird and clumsy but true hearted and in love with Juno whether she is willing to see it or not. The relationship is a near perfect depiction of teenage love, unlike anything we've seen before.

Juno and Paulie are not Dawson's Creek characters who say all the right things all the time or seem understanding beyond their years. This is how real teenagers express their love with metaphoric hair pulling and subtext filled bickering because they can't express or understand their true feelings. The love is clumsy and faltering and so very true.

It is at once astonishing and not all that surprising that all involved are so very young. For director Jason Reitman Juno is only a second feature. This is writer Diablo Cody's screen debut and for star Elliot Page, they are  almost a veteran appearing in their third feature outing following the well reviewed indie Hard Candy and the big budget actioner X-Men: The Last Stand.

It is their youth that invigorates Juno and gives the film its truth. They know these characters and this situation because they are so very close to them in terms of experience and age. Youthful exuberance is what enlivens the whole of Juno and makes it such a pleasure to behold.

I would be remiss if I did not also praise the soundtrack of Juno, so sadly overlooked by Oscar. The music of Juno is integral to the drama without ever overshadowing it. Nor does the music act as Greek chorus, Reitman and music supervisor Peter Afterman make near perfect use of both classic pop/alternative and newer music from bands like Belle and Sebastian and The Moldy Peaches.

The Peaches song "Anyone Else But You" provides one of the years great music moments, a coda to the film perfect in it's subtlety.

Movie Review Knight and Day

Knight and Day (2010) 

Directed by James Mangold

Written by Patrick O'Neill 

Starring Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgard, Viola Davis, Paul Dano 

Release Date June 23rd, 2010 

Published June 22nd, 2010

Despite repeated bashings in the media, Tom Cruise remains one of the biggest stars in the world. While his image took hits due to what some called bizarre behavior (couch jumping) his appeal to audiences hasn't seen much of an effect. It would be easy to point to his time as an United Artists movie executive and the modest flop Lions For Lambs as symbols of Cruise's slipping star power.

For that narrative to fit however you have to ignore his next film Valkyrie, a real dog of a movie that Cruised past 200 million dollars at the worldwide box office. The fact is, as much as so many in the media seem to want to write him off, Tom Cruise remains one of the last true movie stars and his new movie Knight and Day co-starring Cameron Diaz and directed by James Mangold is ready to prove it once again.

In Knight and Day Tom Cruise plays Ray Miller a super spy on the run with a much sought after item. What this item is doesn't really matter. What matters is that he has it and others want it. Ray needs to catch a flight for Boston and aware that he's being followed he takes advantage of a fellow Boston traveler, June Havens. Stashing this hidden item in her bags and then recollecting it after slipping through security, Ray had hoped he'd seen the last of this beautiful but innocent woman.

No such luck however. The bad guys assume she's with Roy and soon she too must go on the run with Ray and the McGuffin. For the uninitiated, the McGuffin is a Hitchcock creation; it's a plot device motivating characters from one scene to the next with their desire to capture the coveted McGuffin. In Knight and Day it's some all-powerful battery, in Casablanca it was letters of transit, in Pulp Fiction a suitcase filled with gold. You get the point the McGuffin doesn't really matter.

What does matter? Setting up two clever, charming, attractive characters and allowing them to be clever charming and attractive as stuff blows up real good all around them. Director James Mangold is well aware of the formula and sets about staging massive chase scenes and explosions while relying on Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz to charm the audience into not caring about the obvious lack of originality and invention.

Knight and Day is nothing more than a very typical summer action movie but it gets past the been there, done that factor thanks to a pair of leads who know how to push an audiences buttons. Cruise is all smiles and splendid, comical calm amidst the chaos of Knight and Day while Cameron Diaz is gorgeously goofy delivering her magical combination beauty and gangly slapstick.

Both Cruise and Diaz are all charm and Knight and Day succeeds as both an action movie and a comedy because of the clever ways each star holds the screen by reminding us how much we've always liked them. Who cares about how much of Knight and Day is derivative of other action comedies; those movies didn't have Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. Haters be damned, Tom Cruise remains one of the biggest stars in the world and Knight and Day is only the latest example.

Movie Review: Transformers Revenge of the Fallen

Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (2009) 

Directed by Michael Bay 

Written by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman

Starring Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro

Release Date June 24th, 2009

Published June 23rd, 2009

As a kid I was a big fan of Transformers. Looking back now as an adult I marvel at the idea: Wow, I was one weird kid. Transformers is one goofball concept. Talking, alien robots come to earth in search of ancient energy and disguise themselves as everyday cars, trucks and electronics.

This concept raises numerous logical questions, not the least of which is: Why would giant alien robots need to pretend to be everyday objects? You're a giant alien robot, why are you disguised as an Ice Cream Truck or a tape player? Identities taken on by a pair of alien robots.

The goofball premise becomes even goofier in the live action movie and sequel Transformers and Transformers Revenge of the Fallen. Adding Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox and a couple of wacky parental figures for comic relief, director Michael Bay takes a bizarre concept and makes it even more bizarre.

When we last saw the Autobots, good guy alien robots lead by Optimus Prime, they had stopped the evil Decepticons, lead by the evilest of evil alien robots Megatron, from obtaining something called the All Spark. Now, the Autobots and their human friends are prepping for war with the Decepticons once again, this time over something called Energon. Riveted yet?

The key to finding or rather creating energon, maybe, I'm not sure, is inside the mind of college bound Sam Witwicky (shia LeBeouf). It was Sam's seemingly random purchase of a rundown yellow camaro that lead to mass warfare when it was revealed that his car was really the alien robot protector bot Bumblebee. Sam making this discovery automatically drafted him and the girl of his dreams Mikaela (Megan Fox) into the war between Alien robot races.

Now, Sam has a map imprinted in his brain that will lead to the discovery of energon, or something. The Decepticons want to open up Sam's brain and remove the information while Sam needs to lead the Autobots to the energon to stop them.

If that plot doesn't grab you then you should probably skip Transformers Revenge of the Fallen because at 2 hours and 45 minutes you will have to want to be invested in this plot. You will have to work very hard not to be bored or put off by this exceptionally over-complicated and lame plot.

Worse yet are the juvenile, amateur hour attempts at humor. Sam's parents played by Kevin Dunn and Judy White are used as comic filler, first doing a variation on the comic strip Bickersons and then a really odd stretch where mom is whacked out on drugs. None of this has anything to do with alien robots and yet it's in there.

Then there is the robot who speaks jive. The robot who speaks through classic songs on it's car radio and the robot with giant robot testicles. Yes, testicles. Are you laughing yet?

As much as I loathe most of Transformers Revenge of the Fallen even I cannot deny the technical mastery on display. Director Michael Bay cannot tell a good story to save his life  but his special effects work is some of the best in the industry. Optimus Prime is a mind blowing special effect that in a better more daring story would be the lead character.

Here is a sidekick to a group of forgettable human caricatures and one exceptionally beautiful woman. This relegation to the background makes him bland as a character but still extraordinarily rendered. When he is onscreen, especially in battle with the Decepticons, Prime is the kind of star you build movies around.

All of the alien robots are remarkably works of CGI effects. As characters they mostly stink. That however, they have in common with their human counterparts. Shia LeBeouf is a nice actor with a good deal of charisma but his only real character development comes in being in better physical shape than in the first film, the likely result of having to literally run from one special effect to the next, from one on set explosion to the next CGI green screen robot.

There is no denying Michael Bay is a master of effects. If that is appealing enough for you, then see the movie, you might be satisfied. If however, you require a well told story with your massive special effects forget Transformers. See Star Trek a special effects movie that actually bothers to tell a story in between CGI explosions.

Movie Review: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2006) 

Directed by Tommy Lee Jones

Written by Guillermo Arriaga 

Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio Cedillo, Dwight Yoakam, January Jones 

Release Date February 3rd, 2006 

Published February 21st, 2006

There are places we won't believe exist anymore. Modernization and technology we would assume has phased these places out of existence. Places like the old west. Those lawless dust bowls filled with characters ready to drink, fight and kill if they feel like it.

However, watch the headlines and take a look to the south. The old west is still out there in small pockets of the border between America and Mexico. These are places where cowboys still ride horses and carry shotguns. Places where border patrol guards ride like old school texas rangers delivering swift justice to potential border crossers.

As all await Washington's decision to modernize the border crossing with modern fence technology, the old west attitude thrives in lawlessness and old school justice. The new video The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a snapshot of this new 'old west' attitude. Directed by Tommy Lee Jones, Three Burials takes a cursory glance at border policy with a broader eye on how a modern society often doesn't evolve as a whole.

Melquiades Estrada (Juan Cedillo) was a kind soul simply out to make money for his family. Quiet, unassuming and hard working it is no surprise that he would earn the trust and friendship of a hard working roughneck rancher like Pete (Tommy Lee Jones). Bonding over heads of steer and women of ill repute, Mel and Pete became brothers.

When Melquiades is murdered Pete first seeks modern justice, an investigation by the local sheriff (Dwight Yoakam). However, unable to escape old west attitudes, it isn't long before Pete is ready for some old school biblical justice.

The man who killed Melquiades is a mystery to Pete but not those of us in the audience. He is Mike a newly arrived, wet behind the ears college dropout who has just accepted a job as a border patrol officer. Moving with his wife LouAnn (January Jones) to a nameless border is for both like a trip back in time some 100 years. Used to the creature comforts of the mall and cable television, the former High School sweethearts, voted most likely to succeed, find themselves failures even in this dust covered piece of nowhere.

Mike has grown quite bitter since his days as a king of high school. Spiritually defeated he takes occasion to let out his aggressions on border crossing mexicans. Warned more than once by his supervisor about his brutal assaults and arrests, it is no wonder that he is the in the killing of Melquiades.

The fates can be cruel. While you might believe that Mike in his typically brutish fashion murdered Melquiades  in cold blood, the facts are quite different. The facts however, matter not to Pete who simply and singleminded seeks justice and also seeks to keep a blood promise to Melquiades.

Pete must take Mel back to Mexico and bury him in his hometown and Pete plans to make certain Mike witnesses this funeral first hand.

Thus begins the true thrust of The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada. A death march across the barren desert as irony of ironies a pair gringos crosses the border into Mexico.

Written with hard bitten determination by Guillermo Arriaga, Three Burials has a soft spoken hypnotic pitch to it's dialogue. While Arriaga's words often ache to be screamed, the actors remain flat and emotionless. No one does stonefaced aggressiveness like Tommy Lee Jones and though his words ar never shouted, the harsh sadness and anger behind each is beyond resonant.

Barry Pepper as Mike is really the only character given to histrionics but like the rest of the cast, it's the croaky, whispered moments that make the most noise. As Mike makes his forced march across the desert at the barrel of Pete's old style six shooter the journey becomes as much Mike as Pete's or as the late Mel's. Is Mike redeemed by this forced journey? That is for you to discover by watching Barry Pepper's haunting, mesmerizing performance.

Though set in modern day America, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada evokes the old west of Peckinpah and Leoni in it's burnt out desert browns and oranges. Picturesque scenery covered in layers of blood and dirt that only old west milieus can convey. This is as beautiful looking a film as it is well acted and moving.

There is another aspect of this story that few people want to comment on. An undercurrent of homoeroticism that is actually quite common in supposedly macho movies bubbles beneath the surface of this manly tale of revenge. Though Pete indulges in an affair with a local married waitress well played by Melissa Leo, it becomes clear that Melquiades is his one and only love. Now neither man would even admit or act upon it, but the bond between the two men, especially expressed after Mel's death, is deeper than Pete can deal with out loud.

There are many layers to peel away while experiencing this intense revenge fantasy. Layers of pain, heartbreak, denial and redemption. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a treasure trove of subtext and of visual artistry. A truly must see picture for anyone who loves movies.

Movie Review The Hangover

The Hangover (2009) 

Directed by Todd Phillips

Written by Jon Lucas, Scott Moore 

Starring Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha 

Release Date June 5th, 2009 

Published June 5th, 2009 

The glitz and glamour of Las Vegas has long been a tempting target for the movies. But, rarely has the ever so carefully un-wholesome Vegas mantra "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas" been better explored than in the brilliant new comedy The Hangover. Directed by Old School's Todd Phillips, The Hangover is male arrested development and Vegas debauchery at its finest.

Four pals travel to Sin city with plans to drink and gamble and be back home with a day to spare before one of them, Doug (Justin Bartha) gets married. Those plans go out the window fast as a night of PG-13 debauchery takes an X-rated turn and the groom ends up missing.

The story picks up the day after the debauchery when Doug's pals Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Andy (Zach Galifianakis) awaken in their high roller suite to find a purloined tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet and one missing groom. They remember nothing of the night before and have to piece the night together from available evidence.

A medical bracelet tells them they took a trip to the hospital. A valet claim card delivers the police cruiser they evidently stole and a photo tells them that Stu married to a complete stranger. The trip to the hospital, the cop shop and the chapel lead to more bizarre revelations as we follow on a debaucherously amateur detective story.

The story is inventive in the way it continues to spin the boys' behavior out into new and ever more outrageous action but what really sets The Hangover apart are the three actors at its center. Bradley Cooper plays the handsome ladies man as a wannabe bachelor bitter about having given up his freedom for marriage. He is the traditional lead in a comedy of this sort but Cooper gives the role an edge by blending into the ensemble and truly being one of the boys.

The Office co-star Helms is the nebbish nerd with a harridan girlfriend (Rachel Harris) whose so henpecked he has to say he's in wine country instead of Vegas and has some real tap dancing to do when the trip is extended by another day. Helms gets the privilege of playing opposite the radiant Heather Graham as the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold who may be the key to him leaving his old life behind.

And then there is Zach Galifianakis. The enigmatic comic, known for making the great Steven Wright look cheery in comparison when on the stand up stage, is the breakout star of summer 2009.

Roger Ebert fairly compares Galifianakis to John Belushi in Animal House. It's that iconic. Zach's Andy is a wealth of comic non-sequiturs and manages to make a character generally played as a creep into a sweetheart of a man-child whose naïve observations and physical carriage are parts of the funniest performance of the summer.

The Hangover is arguably the funniest movie of 2009. Destined to break out the pack thanks to its absurd amount of laughs and slightly tweaked take on material that seems more familiar than it really is. It's essentially a road picture filled with human caricatures, recognizable types who should work through a mechanical plot to a rote end. Not the case here where the mechanics are twisted and turned in such surprising and hilarious ways.

This is one time where you will welcome a Hangover.

Movie Review: Dream House

Dream House (2011) 

Directed by Jim Sheridan

Written by David Loucka

Starring Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz, Martin Csokas, Elias Koteas 

Release Date September 30th, 2011

Published September 30th, 2011

You cannot separate a movie from its marketing campaign. A movie marketing campaign defines what a movie is before audiences get a chance to see it. Dream House, starring Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz has been established as a haunted house thriller via marketing but the problem is, Dream House isn’t really a haunted house movie at all.

The film stars Daniel Craig as a man investigating a murder that he may have committed. The apparitions that Craig’s character sees aren’t ghosts but rather projections of his damaged psyche. The marketing campaign trades the twist about Craig’s character having been in a mental hospital and not being the man he thought he was, so that it can sell Dream House as a ghost movie. This leaves Dream House to limp through 45 minutes of runtime to a reveal that has already been revealed in commercials and trailers.

Daniel Craig is Will Atenton, a successful book editor who is quitting his job to become an author. Will is headed home to his beautiful wife Libby (Rachel Weisz) and their two adorable daughters who are now living in their new home in the Connecticut suburbs. Unfortunately, the realtor has failed to mention that a man named Peter Ward may have murdered his family in this house or that tourists and teenagers like to drop by and look in the windows.

This takes us to about 45 minutes into Dream House. The marketing campaign has spoiled the fact that Daniel Craig’s Will is really Peter Ward and that he may have killed his family. The movie however, treats this as a shocking twist, giving this plot turn a Hitchcockian reveal.

Why spoil the twist? Why ruin what the director clearly believed was important enough to frame as a shocking surprise? The choice to spoil Craig’s identity in the marketing campaign may explain why the cast of Dream House refused to promote the film. Then again, it could also have to do with how everything after the big twist is a clumsy mess.

The resolution of Dream House finds Will/Peter investigating the murder of his family even as he can see his wife and kids as if they were still alive. Will/Peter’s neighbor Ann (Naomi Watts) is among those with important details about the murders as is Ann’s angry ex-husband Jack (Martin Csokas) and a drifter named Boyce (Elias Koteas).

The ending of Dream House is stunningly inept given all of the talent on display. Daniel Craig is compellingly sad yet determined as Peter while Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz do variations on attractive vulnerability. Director Jim Sheridan builds a few strong individual scenes but the ending is too convoluted to be believed or enjoyed.

Could Dream House have been a better movie had the twist not been spoiled by the marketing campaign? Probably not given the bad ending but then again, we’ll will never know. As it is though, Dream House dragged on for 45 minutes to a reveal that I was already aware of before ending in the inept fashion of your average B-movie.

Movie Review: Five Feet Apart

Five Feet Apart (2019) 

Directed by Justin Baldoni

Written by Mikki Daughtry, Tobias Iaconis

Starring Cole Sprouse, Haley Lu Richardson, Moises Arias 

Release Date March 15th, 2019 

Published March 15th 2019

Five Feet Apart stars the utterly brilliant Haley Lu Richardson in a story that is beneath her talent. Richardson stars as Stella Grant, a teenager coping with Cystic Fibrosis or CF. As we meet Stella, she is returning to the hospital with a new recurrence in her lifelong battle with CF. Stella is exceptionally familiar with this hospital, to the point that it appears as if they hold this room for her with her stuff already laid out. That could just be bad editing, but that’s how it plays. 

Also back in the hospital is Poe (Moises Arias), a fellow CF patient. The two of them have been going through CF treatments together for their whole lives and I did like some of their chemistry, even if Poe’s homosexuality is awkwardly jammed into the story via some truly terrible dialogue. The movie needs us to not worry about Poe being heartbroken when we are introduced to Stella’s actual love interest, the dreamy, Will Newman (Cole Sprouse). 

Will is a newcomer at this hospital having recently moved nearby with his single mother to take advantage of a drug trial that is Will’s last hope. While Stella can hope for new lungs that can buy her a few years of life, Will has a version of CF, called B-Cepacia, that is thus far incurable and means that he is not a candidate for new lungs. This has, quite reasonably, made Will an uncooperative patient who is simply waiting to die until he meets Stella. 

Yes, this is one of THOSE movies, where pretty teens die amid their quirky attempts at creating romance in the face of death. What makes 5 Feet Apart borderline irresponsible is the central gimmick which the film rather carelessly flogs for forced drama. You see, CF patients are kept at a strict, 6 feet apart distance. CF patients are so vulnerable to each others strains of virus that incidental contact could inflame brand new infections. 

This is especially dangerous because, as I mentioned, Will’s particular strain is even more deadly than those of Poe and Stella. Does this stop him from attempting to make contact and be around Stella? Of course not. Now, to be fair, the film does well to establish why Stella takes a particular interest in Will, beyond him being dreamy. The same sense that drives her to want to spend time in the NICU fawning over babies through a glass partition, draws her to the equally helpless hunk. 

There is also a well established trope of teenagers with no control over their lives via disease or abuse or something in that vein who take chances at whatever might make their life a little normal. It’s normal for pretty teenagers to want to be desired by other pretty teenagers. It’s normal for them to want things that they cannot really have and take a few risks in order to steal what little of the thing they can of what they can’t have. I am on board with that aspect, but it’s handled rather clumsily here. 

Five Feet Apart was directed by Justin Baldoni who counts on his resume a documentary in which he closely followed the life of a teenager with CF, among a group of patients with terminal disease. You can sense that he cares about getting the disease right, to a point. Baldoni appears to respect what goes into trying to survive CF for as long as one can. Sadly, the conventions of the modern medical drama crossed with the star-crossed teen romance doesn’t allow for the kind of care and nuance that Baldoni might want to bring to it. 

What we get instead is a series of cliched romantic bits that double as unintentional thriller setpieces as we watch in horror as the failed blocking of the characters fails to keep them at the safe distance that the disease plot requires. Sure, they keep saying that they are five feet apart but often it doesn’t look that way. Take the bit they do with a pool cue. Stella claims that the pool cue is five feet long and they use it in a way that allows them to mimic holding hands. However, in more than one scene they are clearly holding the cue wrong and drawing each other too close. 

This becomes a moot concern when they both leap into that swimming pool that all hospitals have. Why not just have them spit in each other's mouths for pete’s sake. Just because the pool is chlorinated doesn’t mean it’s safe. Then they start splashing each other with water. Are you kidding me? Perhaps my germaphobe tendencies are coming to the fore but this seems more than a little irresponsible. Never mind that these are two people who already struggle to breath now just jumping into a swimming pool and exerting themselves in a manner that would deeply stress their lungs. 

I’m probably just being overly picky, but details matter and Five Feet Apart gets far too many details wrong. That, combined with the fact of the film’s treacly and contrived set pieces, such as a late in the game escape from the hospital that coincides with an important turn of the plot, turns this serviceable teen weepie into something rather insufferable by the end. Five Feet Apart pushes the wrong buttons far too often for my taste, even as star Haley Lu Richardson does so many things right. 

Richardson is an exceptional young actress and proves herself to be far more interesting and intelligent than the movie she is stranded within. If you want to see Richardson at her best seek out 2017’s Columbus with her and John Cho. That film is exceptional in every way. I even wrote a loving tribute to the film’s remarkable use of the language of film that you can read if you click here. There is also her remarkably charming and hilarious performance in last year’s criminal under seen, Support the Girls, for even more great Haley Lu Richardson. My review of that movie is linked he

Movie Review: Captive State

Captive State (2019) 

Directed by Rupert Wyatt 

Written by Erica Beeney, Rupert Wyatt 

Starring John Goodman, Ashton Sanders, Jonathan Majors, Colson Baker, Vera Farmiga

Release Date March 15th, 2019 

Published March 15th, 2019 

Rupert Wyatt is a pretty terrific director. His Rise of the Planet of the Apes was an exceptional sequel in a series that was pretty heavy with greatness. Wyatt’s talent for colorful characters and kinetic action set-pieces served him well on Rise of the Planet of the Apes and he brings a similar talent to the new sci-fi action flick Captive State. Unfortunately, for all the good that Wyatt brings to Captive State, the film lacks an essential something, a star quality that could have raised it above the nature of television drama fare.

Captive State stars Ashton Sanders as Gabriel. As a child, Gabriel lost his father and sister to a group of attacking aliens that will come to be referred to as ‘Roaches’ for their bug-like appearance. Gabriel’s brother, Rafe (Jonathan Majors), grew up to be a freedom fighter. While most of the rest of the world gave up hope and began serving the roaches, Gabriel and a small cabal of activists began fighting back.

It’s been five years, as we join the story of Captive State, since Gabriel last saw his brother. He assumes the worst but holds a flicker of hope. In his own little way, Gabriel is rebelling against the system. He and a friend have a plan to get out of their Chicago neighborhood and hopefully out from under the ‘Legislators’ as some have come to call the roaches and the humans who work for them and benefit from their betrayal with wealth and privilege.

The plan involves playing courier to a message, a phone number that he must sneak out of his job where he searches and destroys cell phone memory cards. The phone number is a lovely little creative device as it is written inside a rolled cigarette and we watch it sit precariously behind Gabriel’s ear as he witnesses someone in a similar situation get nabbed and taken away by the police. This sequence is a testament to the talent of director Wyatt and his editor, Andrew Groves, who build a strong, gradual tension even as we know its too early for our hero to falter.

The phone number bit almost coincidentally leads Gabriel to his brother. Rafe has been hiding out in their former apartment in a part of Chicago that had been almost completely decimated years earlier when the roaches sent hunters in to level the place while searching for Rafe and his crew of terrorists. This only hardened Rafe’s desire to battle back and try to light the match that he hopes will spark a revolution.

You may be wondering where John Goodman figures into all of this. He does, of course, feature prominently in the marketing of Captive State as the only recognizable actor in the movie, aside from a bit part played by Vera Farmiga. Goodman plays a police detective who believes that Gabriel may be the key to preventing another attack by Rafe and his freedom fighters. Goodman’s Detective Mulligan is a super smart character whose motives are well shrouded. I especially loved his brief interactions with Farmiga which carry both a ruefulness and mistrust and a genuine tenderness that informs all that eventually happens in the third act.

Again, Rupert Wyatt is a smart director and because of his clever choices and solid artistry, I kind of enjoy Captive State. Unfortunately, the rest of the film’s cast is where the movie struggles to the point that I struggle to recommend it to you, dear reader. Let me preface this that I believe Ashton Sanders is a fine actor. He does the best that he can but as a relative newcomer he is limited and what he lacks is the heft of recognition. You don’t know who Ashton Sanders is and by extension, Gabriel remains something of an unknown.

This problem extends to Jonathan Majors as Rafe. For a time, we are taken from Gabriel who becomes trapped by some alien force for a time and sidelined from the plot. With Majors are four other actors whose names I struggle to even identify on IMDB. None of these people are bad actors but they are about as recognizable as strangers in a crowd. We are supposed to invest in these characters as they plot a major attack on the legislators but I struggled to keep an eye on them and remember who they were.

I know this won’t be popular to say, but these roles needed more than merely competent actors. If these characters are going to be this important to the plot, they need to be played by people who carry some form of recognition with the audience. They need to be played by, for lack of a better descriptor: stars. These actors are competent but not one of them has the charisma of a star. I don’t mean box office attractions, I mean that ineffable quality, that charisma that sets some actors apart from others.

Actor Ben Mendelsohn is a frequent topic of discussion between myself and my friends. I have made fun of the fact that he is not a household name. I’m not wrong about that. But, what Mendelsohn has in spades is that ineffable quality; he stands out in a crowd. The camera doesn’t search for him, it’s attracted to him. Mendelsohn, like great character actors before him such as J.T Walsh or the great Harry Dean Stanton or Ned Beatty, has a charisma that helps him stand apart from any crowd they are in.

Sadly, Jonathan Majors, Madeline Brewer, Marc Grapey, even the slightly more recognizable Kevin J. O’Connor, lack that charisma. This is not to say they won’t ever develop that recognition level, they are already quite capable performers. Unfortunately, a movie that relies so heavily on us being able to keep track of these characters needs actors who draw our eye and our sympathy based almost entirely on our innate attraction to them.

There are simply so many characters to track through Captive State that when things begin to happen at a breakneck pace it’s very easy to get lost in the crowd and our emotional connection to these faces we only barely remember is limited. If one of these characters were played by Walton Goggins or a Margo Martindale or a Kal Penn, we might find it easier to get and stay invested in them and their fate.

I know some are saying that either this should not matter or that the actors in this movie aren’t good enough but I don’t think that is the case. I think these actors are fine, and even the direction is quite good at trying to help us stay with these actors but we don’t have that deeper recognition that comes from an actor or actress we remember. This plot would resonate more if we had a deeper connection to these minor yet important characters. Movie stars matter when you are trying to connect your audience to your characters.

This isn’t the only thing that holds back Captive State but it is the most trying element for me. The film grows a tad convoluted in the final act and the ending has a particular predictability to it but I could have got behind it if I were more invested in the supporting cast. That extends to our ostensible star, Ashton Sanders. As handsome and capable as he is, he’s not yet a movie star. He’s not ready to carry the burden of being the central figure in a major movie.

Some movies do benefit from a less than showy cast. Steven Soderbergh loves working with amateur casts and has made amazing movies with first time actors in unusual roles. His film Bubble is a minor classic that has no movie stars. Captive State however, is basically a big budget sci-fi movie on a shoestring budget. With a plot this big and a story this expansive, we need the grounding of a recognizable face. In this way, Captive State comes up just a little short of something I can fully recommend. 

Movie Review Greta

Greta (2019) 

Directed by Neil Jordan 

Written by Ray Wright, Neil Jordan

Starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Isabelle Huppert, Maika Monroe, Colm Feore, Stephen Rea

Release Date March 1st, 2019

Published March 1st, 2019

Greta has the makings of a very good movie. The film was directed by Neil Jordan, the Irish auteur known for The Crying Game among a varied and daring nearly 30 year career. Greta stars 16 time Cesar nominee (Cesar=French Oscars) Isabelle Huppert and perennial rising star Chloe Grace Moretz, an actress seemingly always on the verge of a breakout role. So how did Greta go so very, very wrong? 

Greta is the name of the character played by Isabelle Huppert as a lonely, French widow living in New York City. One day, Greta leaves her purse on the subway and it is found by Frances (Moretz) who kindly returns the bag and its contents. Frances is treated as some small town hick in New York despite being from the small town of Boston which is like any homey backwater I guess. Is Neil Jordan so up on the New York-Boston rivalry that this portrayal is intentional satire? 

Anyway, my digression aside, Frances returns the bag and finds herself taken by Greta’s sadness and loneliness. She takes pity on the old woman and offers to go dog shopping with her. This turns into repeated dinners at Greta’s home and lengthy, intimate confessions about Greta’s failed relationship with her real life daughter and Frances’ pain over losing her mother and her strained relationship with her father, played by Colm Feore. 

One night, as Frances is helping set up for yet another dinner at Greta’s house, she finds a cabinet filled with purses, each with names and phone numbers attached and the same forms of identification inside. This is a quick indicator that Greta doesn’t just happen to meet people, she leaves these bags places with the intent of having a kind hearted person return them so that she makes a new friend. 

It’s really sad and pathetic but Frances, as if she has read the script ahead of time, reacts as if what Greta did was sinister. Of course, we know that it indeed was sinister but when you look at it just from the information Frances has, it’s merely a pathetic cry for help. Frances acts as if the bags are evidence that Greta is a serial killer. Instead of confronting Greta about what she found she sets about faking an illness and then sets about ghosting the old lady and not returning her calls. 

Greta doesn’t take this well and the thriller plot begins to kick in with Greta as the motherly version of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and that dog that she and Frances bought together playing the role of the rabbit. Greta begins showing up at Frances’ work and at her apartment and even after Frances calls the cop, Greta keeps upping the crazy by following Frances’s best friend Erica (Maika Monroe) while sending creeper photos to Frances. 

These scenes aren’t entirely ineffective but Isabelle Huppert isn’t exactly Max Cady from Cape Fear. Greta is strange and creepy but not menacing. You feel like she could be mollified with the promise of an occasional phone call and a casual lunch. Again, that’s as portrayed in the movie, only the marketing has given us any indication that Greta is crazier than what is portrayed in the movie. Only the film score attempts to push us toward genuinely fearing Greta but Isabelle Huppert doesn’t do much helping with that with her docile performance. 

Docile until she gets her big “I will not be ignored” moment late in the movie but even that moment isn’t notably energetic. The third act of Greta embraces the crazy a little but not in very convincing fashion. Greta goes predictably where you think it was going from the trailer and abuses the kinds of cliches that movies like this always abuse. There is even a dead meat private detective character played by Stephen Rea who may as well have been named Max Plot Device. 

My biggest issue however, with Greta and Neil Jordan is not so much the thriller cliches of good characters making bad decisions or even annoying plot conveniences. The biggest problem is tone. More than once Greta leans a little toward the high level camp that could make the movie work and then pulls back. If Isabelle Huppert is going to play evil in such a mundane fashion the movie needs to find another way to be entertaining and the movie never finds that. The only believable thing about Greta would be embracing just how silly this all is and leaning into it in a darkly comic fashion and it never quite gets there. 

I’ve made allusions to Fatal Attraction in this review and while I am not a fan of that movie either, that film at least appeared to drift into camp with some intent. Glenn Close was believably batty but she was also unconcerned about how people would take her. There is something close to John Waters’ Divine from Female Troubles in the high level, over the top, that Close plays in that movie. Isabelle Huppert lacks the energy or nerve to really go for the campy, sleazy, silly that Greta needs to be more than cliche riddled, base, thriller. 

Sadly, what we get in Greta is a regrettably straight forward series of overly familiar cliches from similar thrillers about obsessive psychopaths. The only seeming innovation is the lack of a sexual component to the main relationship. Greta is not sexually interested in Frances and the film goes a long way to make sure we get that this is about being a mom and not about a psycho-sexual obsession. The crazy lesbian is the one cliche Greta thankfully avoids. 

Strangely, rather than a movie like Fatal Attraction, Neil Jordan’s own Interview with the Vampire is the movie that best presages Greta in presenting something that should be high camp but is played dreadfully and regrettably straight. That film, quite oddly, also features a strangely bloodless and mannerly approach to a parental psycho-obsession as Tom Cruise, rather than being sexually obsessed with Brad Pitt’s effete and pretty fellow vamp, is more mad that Pitt won’t play along with being his scion. 

Mannerly is a good way to describe Greta. Yes, this is a movie about a psycho stalker but it is going to be decent and respectable about that plot in a way that deflates the movie. Bloodless, for the most part, and with a lead performance with the restraint of a Nun, Greta is a bizarre watch. The score appears to be the only part of the movie that embraces what this movie should be. The film score is filled with moody stabs and atmosphere that is lacking from the performances.  

Tyler Perry's Madea Family Funeral

Tyler Perry's Madea Family Funeral (2019) 

Directed by Tyler Perry

Written by Tyler Perry 

Starring Tyler Perry, Ciera Payton, Courtney Burrell

Release Date March 1st, 2019 

Published March 3rd, 2019

Tyler Perry’s Madea Family Funeral is yet another example of Tyler Perry’s bizarre approach to making movies. Evidence suggests that Tyler Perry acquires a script for a simple, dramatic movie and then, for reasons that only make sense to him, he inserts himself dressed as a woman and that woman’s brethren doing incredibly unfunny schtick that undermines the drama of the actual story taking place. 

With that in mind, I am going to review this movie in two pieces. I am going to review the movie that Family Funeral would be without Madea and the movie that Perry is making with Madea and her cast of wacky characters. This will demonstrate to you the tonal whiplash of attempting to follow a Tyler Perry movie. It’s honestly, exhausting for someone who watches movies for a living to watch what is essentially two movies playing at the same time. 

Family Funeral features an ensemble cast that includes Ciera Payton, Rome Flynn and Courtney Burrell, as siblings, Silivia, Jesse and AJ, who have returned home to Georgia to throw their parents, Viane and Anthony (Jen Harper and Derek Morgan) an anniversary party. Along with them are their spouses including David Otunga as Silvia’s husband, Will, Gia (Aeriel Miranda), Jesse’s fiancee, and Carol (KJ Davis), AJ’s wife. 

AJ however is sleeping with Gia behind his brother’s back and this is how AJ happens to be on hand when his dad is found dead in a hotel room having suffered a massive heart attack while cheating on Viane with a family friend, Renee (Quin Walters). Now, what was planned as a happy occasion is now going to a funeral at which family secrets will be exposed and lives will be altered forever. 

In the other movie inside Madea’s Family Funeral, Madea (Tyler Perry) has been invited to the Anniversary party for Viane and Anthony. What relationship does Madea have to this family? Who knows, but her brother Heathrow (Tyler Perry) has invited her and her other brother Joe (Tyler Perry) and Madea’s pals Hattie (Patrice Lovely) and Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis) to come to this party and they’ve tapped Joe’s son Brian (Tyler Perry) to drive them to Atlanta. 

It’s anyone’s guess how Madea is connected to this family in Atlanta. This family has not been mentioned before in previous movies, specifically Madea’s Family Reunion, but that only matters if you are likely me and demand that a movie proceed with some sort of internal logic. Tyler Perry is not like me. Tyler Perry has no need of internal logic, plot, even characters are really only a suggestion of a series of broad traits. 

The entirety of the Madea portion of Madea’s Family Reunion could be removed from this film and it would not affect the plot whatsoever. Sure, Madea and her gang are also on hand when Anthony’s body is found, in S & M gear, in a hotel. We assume he’s in S & M gear, based on what we see, that was likely an on-set improv that Perry liked and left in the movie despite the lack of visual evidence at hand. 

The discovery of the fact that a father and, allegedly, a family friend has been found to be cheating on his wife and has been found dead by his eldest son in a hotel room with a family friend, in S & M gear, is so jarring that neither the comedy nor the extremes of dramatic emotions are allowed to land in any way. A man has just died but that doesn’t mean that wacky characters can’t do awkward, unfunny schtick like attempt to perform oral sex on the corpse in place of CPR. That’s a pleasant gag that exists in this movie. 

Tyler Perry, by the way, does not care for CPR. CPR makes Tyler Perry profoundly uncomfortable as he equates blowing air into a dying person’s chest with kissing and when the dying person is a man then it becomes a gay panic situation. Yes, CPR on a man is an occasion for gay panic jokes because being gay needs just a little more unnecessary stigma attached. Performing CPR means your sexuality is questionable somehow. Are we sure that this movie was made in this century? 

I get that Madea’s ‘political incorrectness’ is supposedly part of her charm but that charm is lost on me. Once, this character was a bizarre moral center of a movie universe. Then, Perry decided to change her backstory from a scolding southern grandma/avenging angel to that of a former gangster, prostitute, drug addict stripper who is also a wise old sage dispensing moral judgments from an unearned high horse. 

Whiplash is the lasting effect of a Tyler Perry movie. On one side is a serious family drama about lies and infidelity and the other side is a broad burlesque of elderly former criminals and drug addicts doing unfunny schtick. I thought it was bad when Madea wielded a chainsaw in the midst of the super tense drama about spousal abuse in Diary of a Mad Black Woman but at least at that point Madea was just a weird side note. 

Now that Madea is the center of the universe in Perry’s movies she’s become a monster lording her unfunny references to gang life, pimps and ho’s over the top of otherwise half baked but serious dramas. It’s the worst kind of mash up, as if an elderly version of rapper Lil Kim were dropped into the middle of a reboot of Parenthood. These two things don’t go together. The drama is half baked at best and the comedy is so broad and schticky it’s like the worst episode of Def Comedy Jam in history. 

I can see where the Madea character worked on a stage where the improv might feel organic and the setting might encourage such broad swings of tone but in a movie where editing and camera work and acting are necessary to the medium, this brand is ill-fitting. Perry’s style doesn’t mesh with the movies the way it, I assume, meshed with live audiences in the early 2000s when Perry developed the character of Madea on stages in church basements. 

Tyler Perry has allegedly stated that this will be the final movie in the Madea franchise and if that is the case, good riddance. I genuinely have nothing nice to say about the character or the movies. I don't understand the appeal and I never will. That said, I don't buy that he's done with this character. Perry has proven to be a mercenary filmmaker throughout his career and while he has plenty of money, I will need some convincing to believe he is walking away from his cash cow. 

Movie Review: Alita Battle Angel

Alita Battle Angel (2019) 

Directed by Robert Rodriguez

Written by James Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis

Starring Christoph Waltz, Rosa Salazar, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earl Haley

Release Date February 14th, 2019

Published February 14th, 2019

Alita Battle Angel has been the dream of director-producer James Cameron for a number of years. While he’d placed the project on the backburner to focus on his Avatar franchise, Cameron never stopped loving Yukito Kishiro’s unique comic universe. Though he eventually walked away from directing Alita Battle Angel, Cameron can be credited for keeping the idea alive as a film property and that life is now realized with director Robert Rodriguez bringing Alita to the big screen. 

Alita Battle Angel is a CGI part live action adventure starring unknown newcomer Rosa Salazar as the titular Alita. Alita is a cyborg warrior who was found mostly dead and forgotten in a junkyard by Dr Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz). Dr Ido put Alita back together inside the cyborg body that he’d once intended to give to his daughter. In this body, Alita is essentially, in many ways just a teenage girl but because of her cyborg heart, she has a quickness and fighting acumen that rivals any man. 

Slowly, Alita begins to regain her memory. After a particularly dramatic and violent moment in which she realizes she has serious violent tendencies, Alita remembers that she was once a warrior and now she wants to put that side of herself to good use as a bounty hunter. This is something Dr Ido strongly opposes but he cannot stop here. At the same time, Alita has also begun entering a romantic relationship with a flesh and blood human named Hugo (Keean Johnson). 

Both Hugo and Dr Ido have secrets that they are keeping from Alita, secrets that will be revealed and shape the early plot of Alita Battle Angel. It’s these secrets that tie in the other supporting players in this adventure including Chiren (Jennifer Connelly) a fellow doctor who takes a keen interest in Alita and the dangerous Vector (Mahershala Ali) who acts as the eyes and ears and event the occasional avatar of the film’s true big bad, named Nova. I won’t spoil the cameo of the big name actor who plays Nova as the film spoils it in remarkable fashion. 

Not spoil in the sense of revealing something too soon. Rather, the way this big name cameo is revealed is akin to something spoiled and rotting. This cameo reeks to high heaven. It’s an absolute laugh out loud stinker of the lowest calibur. The cameo comes along in an already faltering third act of Alita and provides a yawp of unintended laughter before becoming a highly problematic plot point as the film comes to a close. 

I won’t spoil the ending as even my negative review of Alita Battle Angel likely won’t prevent many from seeing it. Plus, I actually don’t hate Alita Battle Angel, not completely. The first two acts of Alita Battle Angel were unexpectedly emotional and compelling. Rosa Salazar is a young actor to watch. What she lacks in experience and chops she makes up for with confidence and energy. Some may find her enthusiasm cloying but I found it winning, for 2 out of three acts of the movie. 

I even admired the attempts at romance in Alita Battle Angel. Yes, there are odd questions that the main character raises as a cyborg teenage girl, many of those questions being deeply unsettling or creepy but nevertheless. That said, Salazar sparks well with fellow newcomer Keean Johnson and I liked the plot complications that Hugo brings to this story. In pro wrestling terminology, Hugo is what we call a tweener, a character somewhere between good and evil and teetering one way or the other. 

There is perhaps almost too much Oscar gold in Alita Battle Angel. The pedigree is darn near distracting with three Oscar winners, four if you count Christoph Waltz twice, one Oscar nominee, an unrecognizable Jackie Earle Haley, and a cameo from an Oscar nominee. Robert Rodriguez has stacked the cast with Academy faves in order to balance out his romantic leads, both newcomers who benefit from the Awards savvy supporting players. 

Even that amount of talent however, can’t save Alita from a third act that flies laughably off the rails. As Alita is fighting her way toward the biggest of the big bads in Alita Battle Angel, she makes choices that make little sense. She suddenly buys into a plot point regarding a warrior code that was not well established before in the plot. This is done for the purpose of plot convenience in the most obvious fashion. 

Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali are then stranded in a classically James Bond moment where the fate of one of their characters is so achingly obvious that you can’t help but roll your eyes at the doozy of a cliché. At the very least, that plot has an unexpected and stunning visual payoff but that doesn’t change the nature of the embarrassing obviousness of that scene. And then the film ends without a complete resolution. 

Alita Battle Angel clips along for two thirds of the movie with a tremendous plot building strong complications with genuine stakes. Then, out of the blue, one of the main characters nearly dies, Alita nearly allows them to die and then, and then… well. I would need to go into serious spoiler territory to disentangle the nonsense that leads to this wholly unsatisfying end. I will only say that this abysmal third act ruined for me what was an otherwise enthralling and thrilling action adventure sci-fi romp. 

I was genuinely bummed when the movie began to falter. I could feel my heart sinking as the music of the final scene began to swell and it dawned on me that the film and these terrific characters would not have the chance to redeem themselves with a final battle sequence. Instead, I was left dispirited by a truly lame and misguided sequel tease. Ugh! Alita Battle Angel is two thirds of a really ripping adventure and one third of a bad Wachowski movie. 

(Sidebar: The Wachowski’s were the makers of The Matrix whose careers have been marked by remarkable ups like The Matrix and stunning failures such as The Matrix sequels and Jupiter Ascending. The final act of Alita sadly compares well to the worst of the output by visionary filmmakers quite similar to Wachowski’s in clout, status and popularity, Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron.) 

(Sidebar Sidebar: Yes, I know if I have to explain the funny-sad comparison it’s less funny but so be it, this parenthesized tangent is entertaining me even more than my insulting comparison.) 

(Sidebar-Sidebar-Sidebar: Then again, is a reference to the Wachowski's really so obscure that people need these sidebars? Perhaps not, but there is a lack of universality as to whether the majority of readers find a comparison to what I see as the worst of the Wachowski's, all that insulting.) 

(Si--- Okay, even I have tired of this.)

Movie Review Cold Pursuit

Cold Pursuit (2019)

Directed by Hans Pettier Moland

Written by Frank Baldwin 

Starring Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Tom Bateman, Emmy Rossum, Julia Jones

Release Date February 28th, 2019

Published February 27th, 2019

Cold Pursuit is the latest attempt to prop up the old guy action star genre. The film is an exercise in silly violence and black humor that is rarely exciting and rarely humorous. Director Hans Petter Moland had more success perhaps the first time he made this exact same movie in Sweden under the title In Order of Disappearance. That film was also an exercise in the old guy action movie genre with Stellan Skarsgard leading the way and doing about as much as Neeson does here. 

Cold Pursuit stars Liam Neeson as Nels Coxman, a snow plow driver in the Colorado Rockies whose job is to keep one road open between a small skiing town and the outside world. Nels is popular in his small town where he has recently been named citizen of the year. Things however take an unfortunate turn when Nels’ son is killed by drug dealers. That’s what he believes happened, cops tell him that his son overdosed.

Being Liam Neeson and thus better than a police detective, Nels sets out to find the drug dealers and begins killing his way up the drug chain of command from the low level dealers who did the killing all the way up to the Denver based kingpin, nicknamed Viking (Tom Bateman). Viking is a cold-hearted killer who, though he employs flunkies for most of his dirty work, isn’t afraid to do some of his own killing. 

While Nels is searching for Viking, Viking is unwittingly searching for him while accidentally blaming a rival gang of Native American drug dealers for the murders that Nels is committing. This only serves to amp up the danger and the bloodshed while Nels flies under the radar for a while creating chaos and unwittingly fomenting the showdown between Viking and his hated rivals in the drug trade. 

Cold Pursuit is efficiently crafted and has a stark and striking setting. Director Hans Petter Moland has a leg up on this material as he did make this movie before. Moland is no stranger to the cold climate as his earlier movie was set in the barren, snowy outlands of Sweden. Moland knows that red blood against white snow is a strong visual as is steamy breath against moonlit darkness. These motifs aren’t exactly new but they are more effective than the silly story of Cold Pursuit. 

Liam Neeson appears as tired of his action movie persona as we are. His Nels may be a tough guy but his age is showing in the bone weary exhaustion in his face and manner. Neeson has spoken of retiring his action movie character but with the terrible, The Commuter, having made more than $100 million dollars at the worldwide box office it appears that only Neeson and film critics, like me, are actually tired of movies like Cold Pursuit. 

Just how tired is Liam Neeson? He disappears from the movie as if he needed a nap before resuming the plot. Partway through the second act, Nels goes offscreen while we follow the bad guys and their machinations against each other while they are unaware of Nels and his one man war against them. Tom Bateman, a British stage actor, is not a bad actor but since we don’t know who he is, he isn’t particularly compelling. 

A role like Viking needed a character actor, perhaps a younger Christopher Walken type. A Walken like actor could have transformed this character with his innate weirdness and oddball tangents. Bateman is playing the role with a good deal of energy and gusto but he’s far too serious. He’s approaching the material with a straight up bad guy performance and there is nothing special about it. The bad guy role is as perfunctory as the plot which literally ticks off a list of kill after kill with names on the screen that get crossed out as the movie goes on. 

I’m aware that Cold Pursuit was intended to have some black humor to it but none of the humor lands all that well. One example of the film’s approach to dark humor happens when Nels goes to identify his son’s body. As Nels waits awkwardly to make the identification we watch while a morgue table rises slowly from the floor to eye level. The table takes forever to rise and we are supposed to, I assume, find it hilariously awkward as the body of Nels’ son rises into the frame. 

Did you know that the brilliant Laura Dern is in Cold Pursuit? Of all of the sins of this perfunctory, forgettable, predictable action movie, casting Laura Dern only to treat her like some unknown day player is perhaps the film’s greatest sin. Why bother paying to have someone of Laura Dern’s stature when you have absolutely no interest in using her talent. Dern plays Neeson’s wife and after their son is killed her role is reduced to sulky resentment toward her husband before she just disappears. 

Movie Review: The Upside

The Upside (2019) 

Directed by Neil Burger 

Written by John Hartmere 

Starring Kevin Hart, Bryan Cranston, Nicole Kidman 

Release Date January 11th, 2019

Published January 10th, 2019

The Upside stars Bryan Cranston as Phillip, a billionaire who suffered a tragic accident that left him paralyzed below the neck. The bigger tragedy for Phillip though, was the loss of his wife who died from cancer not long after Phillip’s accident. Phillip’s top executive, Yvonne (Nicole Kidman) has just retrieved him from the hospital after he nearly died from what was implied as an attempt to end his life. 

Coming home, Phillip needs a ‘life auxillary,’ someone to feed him, bathe him, change his catheter, and drive him around. He doesn’t want the help but Yvonne insists. In the process of interviewing qualified candidates, Phillip meets Del (Kevin Hart) who has come to the interview just to get a signature on a form to show his parole officer that he’s been looking for a job. Del is the first applicant to treat Phillip like a human being, even if it just means that Del is rude to him. 

Over Yvonne’s stern objections, Phillip insists on hiring Del despite his complete lack of experience. This is a dark and grave decision as the implication is that Phillip hired him in hopes of Del’s incompetence and lack of care will end Phillip’s life. Del even goes as far as verbalizing this very point in a moment that actually really connected me with the movie. The honesty of this moment breaks the potential mawkishness of the film. 

The Upside could be an overwrought melodrama about overcoming the odds and a magical person who enters the life of someone in need and saves them. That’s still part of the narrative but it is rendered novel and entertaining by the dynamic between the characters and between the leads, Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston. Hart and Cranston are terrific together as mismatched friends with Cranston seeming genuinely delighted by Hart and Hart dedicated to being Cranston’s friend. 

Director Neil Burger hasn’t had much luck in the feature film arena. His most well known movie, The Illusionist starring Edward Norton, was completely overshadowed the year it was released by Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. Both were films about magicians. His other claim to big screen fame was part of the flailing and failing Divergent franchise. That said, he’s always shown glimmers of talent and The Upside indicates he has a talent for character pieces. 

The embattled Kevin Hart doesn’t do himself any favors with the level of gay panic he brings to The Upside. The gay panic gags that caused an uproar on twitter and caused him to leave the gig as Oscar host, gets a big set piece in the film when Del has to change Phillip’s catheter and can’t get over having to touch Phillip’s privates. It’s not a particularly funny gag and I’m not sure why it had to be in the film. That said, the audience I watched with found this set-piece hilarious. 

One unnecessary scene however, doesn’t dampen my enjoyment of the movie. Do I wish Kevin Hart would grow up a little? Yes, it would help this movie a little for him to improve himself and grow up but as for Del in The Upside, it’s a solid performance. The dynamic between Cranston and Hart is one I cannot deny. The film is quite funny at times even as the gags are very familiar. Smoking weed, hitting on women, prostitutes, cliches but Cranston and Hart’s genuine delight in each other is enough for me to put that stuff aside. 

I am most assuredly going easy on The Upside. The film likely doesn’t deserve my kindness but it gets it because I did have fun. The film has its heart in the right place. It has uplift and laughs and pathos. I may have been too familiar with the comic premises but I never stopped smiling because Hart and Cranston are so very good with each other. These two characters, based on a real life pair from France who were previously brought to the screen in the similarly feel-good, The Intouchables, are just really good characters. 

Hart and Cranston have a huge emotional and comedic field to play from dark humor to lighthearted fun. Director Burger then grounds the story with Kidman’s more serious performance and with Del’s redemption story from criminal deadbeat to a guy on the right path. Sure, he won the equivalent of a life lottery but I bought it. I bought Del and I bought Phillip and I cared about them. I laughed with them and that’s just enough for me to recommend The Upside. 

Movie Review: A Dog's Way Home

A Dog's Way Home (2019) 

Directed by Charles Martin Smith 

Written by W. Bruce Cameron, Cathryn Michon

Starring Ashley Judd, Edward James Olmos, Alexandra Shipp, Bryce Dallas Howard

Release Date January 11th, 2019 

Published January 12th, 2019

 A Dog’s Way Home is a movie for kids. I had to keep telling myself that so that I would go easy on this otherwise tacky and manipulative melodrama. This is not a movie intended for an audience capable of seeing through its mawkishness and pushy sentimentality. A Dog’s Way Home is meant for yet to be fully formed intellects that won’t recognize the cheap dramatic tricks on display.

A Dog’s Way Home features the voice of Bryce Dallas Howard as Bella, a dog born living underneath a fallen house. Bella grows up alongside the sweetest group of feral cats in history until animal control grabs most of them and Bella’s mother and brothers. For the next part of her life, Bella is raised by a cat that she calls Mother Cat. Seeing a dog feed on a cat is a new experience and one I am not quite sure I am comfortable with.

Bella’s life is changed forever when she meets Lucas (Jonah Hauer King), a young man who has been working to rescue the cats living in this otherwise destroyed neighborhood. When he finds Bella, Bella falls immediately in love. Lucas takes Bella home even though his landlord doesn’t allow for him to have a pet. Lucas lives with his mother, played by Ashley Judd, an Iraq war vet with the lightest touch of PTSD, she gets a little sad sometimes.

This is the status quo for some time until Lucas crosses the developer trying to raze the building where the cats have been living. The developer sics animal control on Bella and because she is part Pitbull, and Pitbull's are apparently outlawed in Denver, where the film is set, Bella is taken away. Lucas decides to take Bella out of town until he and his mother find a new apartment outside of Denver.

Unfortunately, Bella doesn’t understand that she’s only temporarily going to be away from her owner and when she gets the chance, Bella flees the home in New Mexico and goes on a run through the woods and towns and some 400 miles to get herself back to Denver and back to her beloved owner. Along the way, Bella makes pals with a sweet hearted gay couple and a cougar that she calls Big Kitten.

You know how I said this is a kids movie? Well, there is at least one part that probably doesn’t belong in a movie for kids. In a subplot that left me utterly bewildered, Bella befriends a homeless man on her journey, played by Edward James Olmos, literally slumming for this role. The homeless man, like all of the supporting characters in this film, is a veteran dealing with PTSD. He keeps Bella tied to him until he is close to death when he decides to chain Bella to himself and then he dies.

Yes, this kiddie flick about a heartwarming dog’s journey home, features our hero dog chained to the corpse of a homeless veteran. It’s a scene as bewildering as it is bleak. I get that Bella needs life threatening crises for dramatic purposes but this one goes way too far, and we’re talking about a movie where a dog befriends a cougar and fights wolves. Bella nearly dies until two kids find her and the body because the trauma needed more witnesses I guess.

A Dog’s Way Home will, despite how tacky and cheap it is, still appeal to animal lovers. Much like the classic cheap child in danger plot, audiences can’t get enough of cute animals in danger plots. Add in a cutesy voiceover, as if the dog has a narrator trapped in its skull and audiences go crazy for it. Our love for animals runs so deep that we often give a pass to even the most trashy of cute animal movies and no doubt many audiences will give a pass to A Dog’s Way Home. I won’t but that’s just me.

Movie Review: Escape Room

Escape Room (2019) 

Directed by Adam Robitel 

Written by Bragi F. Schut, Maria Melnik 

Starring Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Tyler Labine, 

Release Date January 4th, 2019 

Published January 4th, 2019 

The first new release film of any year is often not very good in my experience. I have been writing about movies on the internet for nearly 20 years, dating back to having that Microsoft’s now rather ludicrous Web TV. Eventually, I came to dread the start of the year at the movies. Sure, there were Oscar movies that arrived late but the new-new movies of the year, especially the first new release of any year tended to be awful year after year. 

That trend was only recently bucked just last year when director Adam Robitel delivered the terrific final chapter of the Insidious franchise, Insidious The Last Key. I really enjoyed Insidious The Last Key and while the rest of January lived up to the reputation that month has earned as a dumping ground for studios looking to bury their trash while we were dazzled by the Award winner, at least the first new release of the year was entertaining. 

What luck then to find that director Adam Robitel was leading off the year again, this time with a new horror effort called Escape Room. Sure, I was worried when the film appeared to have not been shown to critics but then, at the last minute, reviews started showing up and they weren’t all bad. And, indeed, much like Insidious The Last Key was pretty good this time last year, Escape Room is pretty good kicking off this year. 

Escape Room stars Taylor Russell as Zoey, a shy and mousey college student who receives a strange package. Inside is a puzzle box and inside that puzzle box is an invitation to a fully immersive gaming experience called an Escape Room. For the unaware, Escape Rooms are a real deal experience. The concept has you locked inside a room with a time limit to discover all of the clues and free yourself from the room. 

We also meet two other characters in the run-up to arriving at the Escape Room of the title. Jason (Jay Ellis) is a high powered stock broker who receives a gift from one of his clients. Inside is the same kind of puzzle box sent to Zoey. He and Zoey do not know each other but they will meet at the Escape Room along with Ben (Logan Miller), a supermarket employee who gets a puzzle box from his employer. 

Once at the Escape Room we meet three more characters, Amanda (Debra Ann Woll, from Netflix’s Daredevil) an Iraq war veteran, Mike (Tyler Labine) a truck driver, and Danny (Nk Dodani) who is an Escape Room obsessive. It’s Danny who figures out that the waiting room where they first meet is actually the first of several Escape Rooms they will experience. He’s also the last to accept that these are more than Escape Rooms, they are genuine death traps that they must solve in order to survive. 

What Escape Room does so much better than most recent horror films is give us characters that we genuinely care about. Each of these six characters are genuinely good people with character flaws and a deep and abiding compassion. Jason is set up as the sort of villain of the group, the one who appears to put his own survival ahead of everyone else’s but even he appears to be a good person who gets pushed to an extreme and reacts somewhat poorly. 

There is not one of these characters that I hated so much I hoped they wouldn’t survive. The worst trend in horror of this young century was the move to make villains the center of horror movies and make their victims so hateful, obnoxious and self-involved that we didn’t mind so much when they were hacked up. Escape Room goes the complete opposite direction and creates six characters that we invest in and care about. 

Yes, they are character types, recognizable for some stock characteristics, but they had a genuine quality and compassion for one another that is incredibly refreshing from a genre that revels in the survival of the fittest archetype and views compassion as weakness. I came to adore each of these characters to the point that when one of them sacrifices themselves to save the others I was honestly moved and sad that the character was gone. 

Escape Room does have its issues. The film does feel like assembled pieces from other horror movies such as Hostel and Saw but minus that nastiness. Don’t get me wrong, I truly enjoy the Saw franchise, but even that series tended to fall back on nasty characters rather than good ones. Hostel meanwhile, was wall to wall vile people to the point that I wanted to nuke the entire movie and the sick minded writer-director who assembled it. 

If the character from Escape Room were in a Saw movie, they’d all survive because these characters immediately embrace the ethos of working together and trusting each other's strengths and making up for each other's weaknesses. This is especially true of Taylor Russell’s Zoey who is a tremendously resourceful and compelling protagonist. She is so sweet that you assume she’s weak but Russell invests her with a rigorous intelligence. 

I am really happy to say that I kind of loved Escape Room. I did wish it had only ended once, the two sequel teases did push the wrong buttons for the potential franchise of Escape Room movies but as long as Adam Robitel is at the helm along with the witty and smart writing team of Bragi F Schut and Maria Melnik, nailing their first Hollywood script, I am on board for even more Escape Room fun.

Movie Review: The Theory of Everything

The Theory of Everything (2014) 

Directed by James Marsh 

Written by Anthony McCarten

Starring Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, David Thewlis 

Release Date November 7th, 2014 

Published November 5th, 2014 

Why does "The Theory of Everything" exist? Where did it come from? Why is it here? Not even Stephen Hawking could explain that. 

We have "A Brief History of Time," Errol Morris's remarkable documentary on the life of Stephen Hawking. It is the definitive story. "A Brief History of Time" combines Stephen Hawking's life and work as they should be, fully intermingled in time. Cross-cutting Stephen's childhood with bits of his theory, shifting between interviews about his past to his present theories, flows brilliantly with the way Stephen Hawking sees the world. It is timeless. 

"The Theory of Everything," on the other hand, is a linear, conventional, Hollywood biopic with all the soft edges and soft focus of classic hagiography. Eddie Redmayne suffers for his art as he contorts himself into an exceptional bit of mimicry. But for what purpose? Redmayne is a fine actor, but he doesn't give us anything new about Hawking. Redmayne and director James March merely recite Hawking’s life in image and dialogue. 

"The Theory of Everything" is based on the book by Jane Hawking, Hawking's first love and mother of his three children. The film is likely to make up for her diminished role in "A Brief History of Time," in which she chose not participate back in 1991. That’s nice, but it doesn't make the film all that more compelling. Jane is sweet and smart and above stalwart in the face of Stephen's many setbacks. But as played by Felicity Jones, she doesn't seem to have much inner life. 

Jones is a lovely actress who is left bland by the demands of a script. The story makes her out as both a saint and a victim who suspended her own life in favor of Stephen's, only to see him move on in a relationship with his nurse after 20-some years of marriage. That's not to say that this passage in the film has much drama to it either. The marriage breakup is followed by Jane immediately finding love again. She and Stephen are able to find friendship and peace without any seeming messiness. 

"The Theory of Everything" is a pretty movie with a pleasant score, a gentle sense of humor and a highly professional polish. So what? What is all of the polish in the world going to reveal about one of the most remarkable minds in history? Hawking's work is his most remarkable legacy. Here his theories are given  short shrift in favor of a kitchen-sink melodrama about potential or perceived marital infidelity. Even though it is based on fact, it’s the least interesting aspect of his life. 

Give me black holes and String Theory over marital morality plays any day of the week. You can have your gossip about who may have cheated on whom and when. I want to know more about time.

That's why "A Brief History of Time" makes "The Theory of Everything" irrelevant. In “Brief History” we get both a biopic (minus the gossip) and Hawking’s work. The work, not his love life, makes Hawking someone on which to focus a movie. 

Movie Review: Conan the Barbarian

Conan the Barbarian (2011) 

Directed by Marcus Nispel 

Written by Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer, Sean Hood 

Starring Jason Mamoa, Rachel Nichols, Stephen Lang, Leo Howard, Ron Perlman

Release Date August 19th, 2011

Published August 19th, 2011 

In all honesty, I expected to hate Conan the Barbarian. Critics aren’t supposed to be prejudiced against a movie but director Marcus Nispel doesn’t have a great track record. Nispel’s Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes are exercises in brutality and I’m not talking about what he puts his characters through, but what he puts the audience through with his ham-fisted, overly stylized, blood and guts approach that treats characters as bags of meat that exist only to be split open like piñatas.

Don’t misunderstand, there are plenty of meat-bags in Conan the Barbarian waiting to be split open like so many pigs at a slaughterhouse, but somehow, one of the writers actually snuck a modicum of character development into the film and the yeoman work of the casting director found a few shockingly talented actors who miraculously manage to act amidst Nispel’s fetishistic bloodlust.

Jason Momoa plays Conan the Barbarian, a man born as a warrior; literally. He was born in the middle of a battle, cut from his dying mother’s womb amidst a clash of swords and the separating of limbs from bodies. Raised by his barbarian daddy, expertly played by that charming lunkhead Ron Perlman, Conan develops into a warrior at a very young age.

14 year old Leo Howard plays young Conan and the kid is a star. It was Howard as young Conan exhibiting badass skill in taking down a small horde of bad guys and carrying their severed heads back to his father as a trophy that won me over. When young Conan is forced to witness an atrocity against his family at the hands of the ruthless, power hungry Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang), Howard brings fierce intensity to Conan rather than the simple tears and fears of a child.

Jumping ahead a decade or so we find Conan as a warrior pirate sailing the scummy sea sides in search of any sign of Khalar Zym and the chance to avenge his family. When his chance arrives, following a siege by Zym and his nutty sorceress daughter, Marique (Rose McGowan), at a formerly peaceful mountainside monastery, Conan doesn’t let the opportunity pass, even if it means using an innocent beauty, Tamara (Rachel Nichols) as bait.

Jason Momoa, I’m told, is quite compelling on HBO’s Game of Thrones where his Khal Drogo is a silent yet imposing killer. In Conan the Barbarian however, Jason Momoa is shown up big time by the young Conan the Barbarian, Leo Howard. Howard is the star, Momoa merely carries on the compelling character that the kid creates. Momoa’s leaden line delivery nearly undoes the hard work Leo Howard put into making Conan so compelling. Thankfully, what Momoa failed at as an actor he makes up for as a physical presence and sword swinging apparatus.

I could sit here and hammer Conan the Barbarian for its blatant misogyny and massive lapses in logic but that would ignore the fact that I knew what Conan the Barbarian was before I saw it. I went into Conan the Barbarian aware that the film was going to treat women as sex objects and damsels in distress and I knew not to expect a heavy dose of brains other than those that spilled out of the cracked skulls of many CGI extras.

It seems unsportsmanlike to call out Conan the Barbarian for living down to expectations. And what would be more unsportsmanlike would be to deny that once you put aside the preconceived notions of Conan the Barbarian, the film is surprisingly compelling, even gripping in its blood and guts way.

Is Conan the Barbarian a little daffy at times? Absolutely, but it is also surprisingly involving and exciting. Do I welcome a Conan the Barbarian sequel? No, I don’t need to see this character ever again but for a one off, blood and guts, 3D epic, Conan the Barbarian is shockingly fun and surprisingly worth the 3D ticket price.

Movie Review: War Horse

War Horse (2011) 

Directed by Steven Spielberg 

Written by Lee Hall, Richard Curtis

Starring Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Peter Mullan, Jeremy Irvine 

Release Date December 25th, 2011 

Published December 25th, 2011

There is one truly great scene in Steven Speilberg's "War Horse." The scene involves the hero horse escaping from torture minded German soldiers, racing through a field covered in barbed wire. The horse manages to break through much of the barbed wire but eventually is taken down and looks to be dying a horrible death wrapped in barbed wire.

As the sun comes up British and German soldiers from opposite ends of this World War 1 battlefield see something moving in the middle of the battlefield and assume it may be a wounded soldier. White flags go up from both sides and a sentry is dispatched from each.

For a moment a tenuous peace is forged as two enemy soldiers work together to free the horse from the barbed wire. The dialogue, the acting and director Steven Speilberg's calm, observant style give this centerpiece scene in "War Horse" energy and excitement that is lacking in the rest of the film.

A Horse Named Joe

"War Horse" stars Jeremy Irvine as Albert, a farm boy with a loutish, drunken father (Peter Mullan) who brings home skinny horse more suited for racing than the plow horse he was supposed to purchase. Albert takes to the new horse and names it Joey.

When Albert's father sobers enough to realize what he's done he wants to shoot Joey. Albert and his mother (Emily Watson) manage to stop him at least long enough for Albert to try to teach Joey how to draw the plow over the rocky shoals of the family farmland.

Albert's task becomes a spectacle as their landlord, Mr. Lyons (David Thewlis) brings a crowd to watch what he expects will be a major failure. The plowing scenes are a solid piece of cinema; rousing and sympathetic but they are merely killing time until the major plot kicks in.

Separated by War

The major plot is World War 1 and Peter's father giving up Joey, against Albert's wishes, to the military cause. Joey becomes the property of Captain Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston) who promises to return Joey to Albert after the war. Sadly, Captain Nicholls underestimates the toll of the war ahead.

Will Joey be able to find his way back to Albert? Will Albert join the cause and search for Joey? Can either survive the horrors of the First World War? Good questions all and each has the potential to be very moving and entertaining.

"War Horse" is filled with potential mostly unrealized. Steven Speilberg's approach here is almost entirely homage with little of anything new or exciting. Individual scenes of "War Horse" capture Speilberg at his best but most of the film is a droning bore of tributes to War movies past.

Old School Meets New School

"War Horse" is the first film that Steven Speilberg edited digitally rather than with a traditional editing suite on the back of a flatbed truck. This move toward a more modern approach is somewhat ironic in that it is applied to one of the most old school movies of Speilberg's long and illustrious career.

"War Horse" is certainly not a bad movie but it's not a great movie either. The film will appeal to fans of old war movies as well as to fans of horse movies, a genre all its own. I recommend "War Horse" for the very particular group of fans I just mentioned; for everyone else "War Horse" shouldn't be your first choice until it arrives on DVD in 2012.