Classic Movie Review Barfly

Barfly (1987) 

Directed by Barbet Schroeder 

Written by Charles Bukowski 

Starring Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Alice Krige 

Release Date October 16th, 1987

Charles Bukowski’s writing transcends experience. Something about his words can penetrate all life experience. I’ve never been through the gutters that Bukowski frequented, I’ve never even had a drink of alcohol, but there is something so powerful, visceral, and evocative in Bukowski’s skid row poetry, it’s hard not to be moved or have your stomach turned or to smile and not even know why. Bukowski’s naturalism, his vivid realities, speak to human experiences in the most unique ways.

That said, Bukowski’s prose was never thought to be a natural for the big screen. And yet, here we are with Barfly turning 30 years old this weekend. Bukowski wrote the screenplay at the behest of director Barbet Schroder who promised direct the film exactly as Bukowski wrote. It took nearly a decade and the insane producers Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus to make it happen, but Schroder lived up to his promise. Barfly is fully and completely a product of Bukowski.

Mickey Rourke stars in Barfly as Henry Cisnaski, a Bukowski stand in. Henry is a drunk and a bum, but he has the soul of Bukowski. Henry is a writer when the moment strikes him. In the midst of another endless bender, Henry is occasionally inspired and writes short stories that in moments of clarity he sends to publishers. One such publisher is on Henry’s trail throughout Barfly with the help of a detective but that isn’t the story of Barfly.

What story there is in these non-traditional narrative centers on Henry’s relationship with a fellow drunk named Wanda (Faye Dunaway). The two meet in a bar, naturally, and share drunken hard luck stories before she takes advantage of a friend to buy more booze for the two of them. She brings Henry to her apartment, only slightly better than his hovel and invites him to stay but with the warning that she would likely go home one night with a man who could afford booze.

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Movie Review Marshall

Marshall (2017) 

Directed by Reginald Hudlin 

Written by Michael Koskoff, Jacob Koskoff 

Starring Chadwick Boseman, Sterling K. Brown, Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, Dan Stevens, James Cromwell

Release Date October 13th, 2017 

Marshall stars rising superstar Chadwick Boseman in the role of legendary Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Set years before Marshall rose to be one of the most respected judges in the country, at a time when black people were still fighting for civil rights, Marshall is a terrific introduction to the man. Boseman, future star of Marvel’s Black Panther, demonstrates the supreme intelligence and charisma that Marshall no doubt possessed as he came up through the ranks of the NAACP to become a leader.

Marshall is set in 1940 when Thurgood Marshall was just getting started with the NAACP. In Bridgeport, Connecticut a black man named Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown) stands accused of raping the wife of his employer, a woman named Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson). The story being told is that Spell raped Strubing twice before forcing her into a vehicle and driving her to a bridge where he threw her over the side. Strubing survived and managed to swim to shore and flag down a passing vehicle to take her to the police.

Marshall arrives in Bridgeport with plans of representing Spell but first he needs a lawyer to sponsor him with the Connecticut bar. Sam Friedman (Josh Gad) had no intention of being that lawyer, but when his brother volunteers him to help, Friedman finds himself thrust into the limelight. Things get further complicated for Friedman when a racist judge, James Cromwell, decides not to allow Marshall to be Spell’s lawyer and instead assigns the case to Friedman, who’d never tried a criminal case before.

With the odds stacked against them, Marshall and Friedman must become a team and find some way to defend their client against a system eager to wrap up the case and move on. As you can imagine, the fate of black man in court in 1940 accused of raping a white woman probably seemed like a lost cause, even in the supposedly progressive Northern states. A racist judge and prosecutor, who have a personal connection to one another that should disqualify them, only stack the odds further against our heroes.

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Movie Review Happy Death Day

Happy Death Day (2017) 

Directed by Christopher Landon

Written by Scott Lobdell 

Starring Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard 

Release Date October 13th, 2017 

Happy Death Day is one of the best surprises of 2017. This seemingly throwaway teen slasher flick turns out to be a sneaky black comedy version of Groundhog Day if Bill Murray were being murdered every day. The film was directed by Christopher Lambert whose résumé is riddled with mediocre screenplays for the Paranormal Activity franchise and whose first feature was the idiotic Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, which leaves me to wonder where he’s been hiding this version of his work?

Happy Death Day stars budding superstar Jessica Rothe as Tree Gelbman, a perky blonde college girl raised on the aesthetics of Mean Girls and Legally Blonde. Her life is lived one party to the next and one partner to the next, until one day she wakes up and finds that the nightmare she had the night before about being murdered by a psycho in a baby mask, was actually real and that she is, for no discernible reason, reliving the day of her death over and over again.

Like Groundhog Day, Happy Death Day doesn’t have much interest in why Tree is stuck in a loop, rather the filmmakers are obsessed with what she does with her repeated days. These break down into several scenarios familiar from Groundhog Day but each with a fun little twist. Tree’s predicament seems like it might be framed for typical slasher fare but instead, the film is infused with a darkly comic, almost slapstick, take on Tree’s predicament in which she constantly tries to anticipate her killer and fails only to wake up comically frustrated by her latest death.

Director Landon crafts a quite clever story that does well to establish a number of potential murderers, among them Tree’s roommate, her sorority rival, a dopey frat guy, a weirdo stalker, Tree’s dad, her love interest Carter (Israel Broussard), and an escaped serial killer. Watching Tree spend some of her days investigating her own death proves to be a good deal of fun, especially her failures in which she is murdered in increasingly unlikely ways.

Find my full length review in the Horror Community on Vocal 

Documentary Review Risk

Risk (2017) 

Directed by Laura Poitras 

Written by Laura Poitras 

Starring Julian Assange, Laura Poitras 

Release Date May 5th, 2017 

The documentary Risk from director Laura Poitras is an engrossing and fascinating portrait of a man that history has yet failed to fully grasp. Julian Assange would like to be thought of as the Robin Hood of the information era, robbing the rich of their secrets and sharing them with the world. But Assange’s choice to make himself the public face of his Wikileaks organization has unquestionably gone to his head and rendered him a paranoid and strange figure who believes conspiracies against him are hiding behind every corner.

Risk was a strange endeavor for Assange from the very beginning. As Poitras points out in notes from a production journal that she added to the film as it evolved, she wasn’t sure why Assange wanted to be part of her project. Poitras doesn’t believe that Assange liked her very much and yet, he gives her unprecedented access to him. A scene of Assange meeting with his lawyer in a grove of trees where he appears deeply concerned about the possibility of drones listening to his conversation demonstrate not the charming spy schtick he seems to want to project but rather a strange, frail and paranoid man.

An early scene in the film finds Assange and a colleague attempting to contact then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Assange is so deluded by his perceived celebrity and importance that he thinks he can call and speak to the Secretary of State just because he wants to. Sure, Assange has something important to tell the Secretary of State about documents Wikileaks is about to release that effect US Intelligence, but to think any private citizen in the world can just call and be connected to the United State Secretary of State is beyond narcissistic.

Then there is the most talked about series of scenes in Risk, those dealing with allegations that Assange sexually assaulted two women in Sweden in 2010. Comically, Assange allows Poitras to film him as he puts on a disguise that he hopes will be enough to get him to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where he is expected to get asylum from extradition to Sweden. The disguise proves silly and unnecessary but more to the point, allowing himself to be filmed putting it on only makes Assange seem strange and slightly unhinged. There’s only more to come on that front.

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Movie Review The My Little Pony Movie

The My Little Pony Movie (2017) 

Directed by Jason Thiessen

Written by Meghan McCarthy, Rita Hsiao, Michael Vogel 

Starring Uzo Udoba, Ashleigh Ball, Emily Blunt, Kristen Chenoweth, Taye Diggs 

Release Date October 6th, 2017 

Having seen the unique and oddly fascinating documentary Bronies a few years back, I have been trying to come to terms with the adult fans of My Little Pony. Is this simply large scale trolling or are these grown men for real in their pony based fandom? Oddly, I don’t feel like either of the Brony documentaries that have been released in the past couple of years have answered my question. I still don’t get what it is that grown men see in My Little Pony.

I definitely see what my 5 year old Goddaughter, Charlotte, finds appealing about the series. My Little Pony combines pretty, colorful, talking horses with a very simple, easy to digest moral in each episode of the series. Charlotte’s favorite color is pink and there is a character in the series named Pinkie Pie, it’s a pretty natural fit for her as yet unformed taste and intellect. That brings me back to the Bronies. Having now sat through My Little Pony The Movie, their interest in this series remains a bafflement to me.

My Little Pony The Movie is centered around the very first Festival of Friendship in which our heroine, Princess Twilight Sparkle, is charged with demonstrating why friendship is the greatest thing ever. Twilight has planned an epic festival featuring a performance by none other than pop star pony Songbird Serenade (real life pop star Sia). As we join the story, Twilight is nervously preparing for a meeting with her fellow pony princesses. She’s hoping to ask them to use their magic to move the sun and the moon to just the right places in the sky to light up the festival.

Unfortunately, Twilight’s plan is thwarted by an attack by an evil baddie known as The Storm King (Live Schreiber) and his top henchman, a former pony kingdom member, Tempest Shadow (Emily Blunt). The Storm King hopes to steal the magic from the Princess Ponies so he can use to take control of the weather and by extension take over all of Equestria. It will be up to Princess Twilight and her pals, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Spike the Dragon, to unite the surrounding pony kingdoms to stop The Storm King and his evil plot.

Find my full length Review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Girls Trip

Girls Trip (2017) 

Directed by Malcolm D. Lee 

Written by Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver 

Starring Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tiffany Haddish, Lorenz Tate 

Release Date July 21st, 2017 

The trailer for Girls Trip made the film look like a nightmare. With a heavy focus on raunchy, gross-out body humor and the most simplistic gloss of #GirlPower, the trailer makes the movie look like a borderline minstrel show of black women. Before you get mad at my glib deconstruction of the trailer and my incendiary language, please try to understand that I am setting the stage to turn around and tell you how much I genuinely enjoyed the movie Girls Trip.

The trailer is bad, there is no question about that, and it is made up of scenes from the film which aren’t all that manipulated from their filmic context. But it’s also just a trailer. It’s just two and a half minutes, and it’s not the job of the trailer to tell us who these characters are. The trailer is a broad brush of the story of Girls Trip, and while it is a genuinely terrible broad brush, having now seen the film I can say that I get the trailer even as I don’t like the trailer.

Here’s the story: a successful, Martha Stewart/Kelly Ripa-esque woman, Ryan Pierce, played by Regina Hall, is on the verge of accomplishing all her Oprah-like ambition. Alongside her remarkably handsome, former football player husband, think Tiki Barber crossed with Michael Strahan, played by Mike Colter, she is close to building her empire. But, as you can imagine, and because this is a movie, her life is not all that it seems on its serenely beautiful surface.

This comes to light when Ryan is set to be honored by Essence Magazine in New Orleans and Ryan decides this is the perfect opportunity to reunite with her wacky college friends, then known as the Flossy Posse (I missed what that referred to, otherwise I would try to explain the name). They are Sasha (Queen Latifah), a former journalist turned celebrity gossip hound, Lisa (Jada Pinkett-Smith), the mom of the group, and Dina (Tiffany Haddish), the wild child-troublemaker of the group with a mouth that would make Seth Rogan blush.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Documentary Review The Lost City of DeMille

The Lost City of DeMille (2017) 

Directed by Peter Brosnan 

Written by Peter Brosnan 

Starring Peter Brosnan, Agnes DeMille, Cecil B. Demille 

Release Date October 2017 

The Lost City of DeMille is a pure delight for cinema historians. This tiny, low budget documentary was thirty plus years in the making and yet captures more than 90 years of film history in its remarkably fun 87 minutes. The history captured in The Lost City of DeMille is that of the director who defined the early days of film and was both progenitor and savior of the art form in its infancy and pubescence. For that alone, The Lost City of DeMille deserves our praise.

In 1982, filmmaker Peter Brosnan heard an old Hollywood urban legend. The legend goes that famed filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, in order to save money, had used the same set for multiple biblical epics of the 1910s and 1920s. Then, to further save money on labor, DeMille had ordered the sets buried in the same desert where they’d towered over nearby enclaves. The place was the small, California town of Guadalupe in Santa Barbara County.

With help from his friend and producer, the late Bruce Cardoza, Brosnan sought out archaeologist Robert Parker and set forth into the desert. What they found was a treasure trove of tantalizing clues. In just briefly brushing away the sand, they’d stumbled on artifacts that lent credence to the to the long-held urban legend. One thing was for sure, DeMille had been here in 1923, but uncovering the truth about the lost city DeMillle buried in the desert would prove nearly as daunting as the task faced by the men who built and eventually buried that lost city.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Three O'Clock High

Three O'clock High (1987) 

Directed by Phil Joanou 

Written by Richard Christian Matheson, Thomas Szollosi 

Starring Casey Siemaszko, Anne Ryan, Richard Tyson, Jeffrey Tambor, Phillip Baker Hall

Release Date October 9th 1987 

Three O’Clock High is a movie about toxic masculinity. It may not have been seen that way in 1987 when the film arrived in theaters, but today there is no denying it. Toxic Masculinity is defined in modern social science as traditionally male behaviors in relation to the expression of dominance. Such behaviors are detrimental to mental health and often times are expressed in actions or behaviors that are sexist, misogynistic, racist, or homophobic. Three O’Clock High ticks almost all of those hateful behaviors in just over 90 minutes of screen time.

It’s not a great day to be Jerry Mitchell (Casey Siemaszko). Jerry woke up late for school, nearly has a devastating car accident with his little sister (Stacy Glick) and best friend (Ann Ryan) in the car and when he arrives at school, his problems are only beginning. A new kid is starting school on this day, a guy named Buddy Revell (Richard Tyson). The stories about Buddy are legendary and range from him having decked a football coach to him having broken a kid’s neck just for touching him.

Jerry, meanwhile, just wants to get through the day but that becomes a challenge when he attempts to engage the new kid, forgetfully pats the new kid on the shoulder and is subsequently challenged to a fight at 3 PM in the school parking lot. The rest of the day is centered on Jerry’s vain attempts at getting out of the fight which include hiring a big tough football player to fight on his behalf, to getting detention for kissing a teacher, to helping the bully cheat on a math test.

None of Jerry’s schemes work because, of course, without the fight at the end of the movie, there isn’t much of anything for the movie to do. Buddy has no nuance to explore, he's just a bully with no real motivation. Jerry, on the other hand, is a dweeb who happens to be the lead in the movie thus giving him secret movie underdog powers that will come in handy during the big fight scene at the end of Three O’Clock High.

That’s your plot and it’s surrounded on all sides by the signposts of Toxic Masculinity. The beef between Jerry and Buddy has the basic hallmarks of gay panic with Jerry making the mistake of trying to start a conversation with Buddy while the two stand at a urinal leading Buddy to ask, in typically 80s fashion, “are you a faggot?” Buddy is quick to deny being gay but then as he attempts to brush past the faux pas, he touches Buddy on the arm and Buddy reacts by calling for the fight.

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Movie Review The Mountain Between Us

The Mountain Between Us (2017) 

Directed by Hany Abu-Assad 

Written by Chris Weitz, J. Mills Goodloe 

Starring Idris Elba, Kate Winslet, Dermot Mulroney Beau Bridges

Release Date October 6th, 2017

The Mountain Between Us is damn near comedy gold. This so bad it’s fun nonsense romance posits two attractive leads delivering silly dialogue and rote drama in the midst of hyper-circumstances. When Dr. Ben, played by Idris Elba, responds to his new friend Alex, played by Kate Winslet, saying that ‘the heart is just a muscle,’ try to control your gag reflex and for the sake of the few who might be able to process such schmaltz, stifle your giggles.

At an airport in Idaho, Dr. Ben apparently believes he can reason his way onto a cancelled flight to New York where he’s supposed to operate on the brain of a 10-year-old child while reuniting the child’s parents and saving the boy’s puppy from a fire. Alex overhears Dr. Ben’s frustration and hatches a plan. She can’t afford to charter a plane on her own but she could go halfsies with the heartthrob doctor and they can maybe get to Denver before the big storm hits.

So, our two new acquaintances kick in some cash and make the dire mistake of hiring Beau Bridges to pilot a small plane to Denver airport. I wouldn’t hire Beau Bridges to drive me to the grocery store, let alone pilot a single-engine plane at his age but that’s just me. I’m probably only saying this, however, because I have seen the trailer for The Mountain Between Us and I know that ol'Beau isn't long for this movie.

If I am being flippant in this review, it is only because I was supremely bored when I wasn’t politely stifling my giggles. The Mountain Between Us is a silly, silly movie that stacks the odds against Ben and Alex to such a ludicrous degree that all we can do is laugh. I’m no Bear Grylls but I have seen a Bear Grylls on TV, so I know that much of what happens in The Mountain Between Us is nonsense from a survival standpoint. With the believability of this adventure out of the way we are left with Winslet and Elba and wow!

How can two people as beautiful and talented as Kate Winslet and Idris Elba have so little chemistry? It’s not even a lack of romantic spark, at times I had a hard time believing they were human beings who relate normally to other human beings. At one point, Elba’s Ben, thinking he might be walking to his doom, asks Alex to take his picture, she’s a professional photog and he quite awkwardly wants to be ready for when he ends up in one of those Top 5 YouTube Videos of the creepy last pictures of people who died.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal

Movie Review Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Written by Hampton Fancher, Michael Green 

Starring Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Dave Bautista, Ana De Armas, Mackenzie Davis 

Release Date October 6th, 2017

 “Sometimes, to love someone, you have to be a stranger.”

Out of context, the above line of dialogue from Blade Runner 2049 doesn’t seem so profound. But when it lands in the context of the story being told by director Denis Villeneuve, the line plays as remarkably poignant. I won’t spoil the context in this review. Indeed, I will venture to avoid any spoilers whatsoever. What I can tell you about Blade Runner 2049 is that it has all of the atmosphere of cool that the 1982, Ridley Scott-helmed original had but with even better characters and deeper meanings, and yes, genuinely poignant moments.

K (Ryan Gosling) is a Blade Runner in Los Angeles circa 2049, 30 years after the time of the original movie. K is tracking down a new generation of Replicants and on his latest job, retiring a hulking replicant played by Guardians of the Galaxy star Dave Bautista, K stumbles into a long-running conspiracy with implications that could rock the foundations of society as he knows it. The secret involves a body, and you will get no more than that from me.

Blade Runner 2049 is rich with questions that the film takes its time to reveal the answers to—not that director Villeneuve is screwing around and playing keep away with the truth. Rather, the story of Blade Runner 2049 is a classic noir mystery ala the original Blade Runner and that kind of story requires patience. The big difference between the new Blade Runner and the original is that this time the questions are bigger and more destructive when answered. There is a remarkable power in steadily unraveling each layer of Blade Runner 2049 and while some might have a hard time with the film’s leisurely pace, I found it riveting.

The key to Blade Runner 2049 is cinematographer Roger Deakins and the way he and Denis Villeneuve have expanded upon the smoky, grimy, and constantly wet streets of Los Angeles of 2049. Noir is best made in the dark with light dancing in puddles and Blade Runner 2049 evokes the old masters of noir while still allowing the movie to look sleek and modern. The noir comes from the atmosphere, as much as the look and the languid pace of the film is matched by Deakins’ visual style which posits a world encased in fog and doused in implacable rain.

Even a trip to the desert is fraught with smoggy gray that blocks out what should be a bright, unyielding sun. The lighting of the desert is remarkably logical and expands on the original movie’s thoughts on the future of the environment, a bleak, ever-worsening landscape of soot and sogginess. It’s dreary and yet a marvel to look at. The look of Blade Runner 2049 is easily as evocative and eye-catching as the original, a film that was tragically overlooked when it came to awarding the Oscar for Cinematography back in 1982. Here’s hoping the sequel doesn’t get the same mistreatment.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Classic Movie Review Blade Runner

Blade Runner (1982)

Directed by Ridley Scott

Written by Hampton Fancher, David Peoples 

Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Darryl Hannah, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos 

Release Date June 25th, 1982 

Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic Blade Runner is one of my favorite films of all time, mostly for the unique, lived-in look, and bleak futuristic setting. Blade Runner is an eye-catching mind-blower that, if it skimps on character development a little, more than makes up for character deficits with incredible visual artistry. It’s unquestionably Ridley Scott’s finest work and with the sequel, Blade Runner 2049, being released soon, it’s as good a time as any to look back on Sir Ridley’s masterpiece.

Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a retired cop living in Los Angeles, circa 2019. Having given up his gig as a so-called Blade Runner, a cop who hunts and kills futuristic slave robots called "Replicants," Deckard is not pleased about being called to his former boss’s office and being pressed back into service. According to the Police Chief, six "Skin Jobs," as he derisively describes the Replicants, have escaped an interplanetary transport, killed dozens of people, and are now on Earth. It will be Deckard’s job to find the Replicants and "retire" them.

The first stop on Deckard’s investigation is the shady Tyrell Corporation where one Replicant has badly wounded another Blade Runner and disappeared. Hoping to gain insights into how to find these dangerous replicants, Deckard sits down to administer what Blade Runners call the Voight-Kampf Test, intended to determine whether the person being interviewed in the test is a human or a replicant. The V-K test works by gauging the emotional responses of the subject to a series of very odd questions—some nonsensical, others with a specific moral center.

The replicant that Deckard interviews, at the behest of the creepy Dr. Tyrell, is Rachael, played by Sean Young. Rachael is unaware that she is a replicant. Tyrell has programmed Rachael to have memories that he implanted into her brain that she believes prove that she is human. Whether or not Tyrell included a life limit of four years into Rachael’s coding is unknown, but we do know that most replicants have only a four-year life span and that Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the most dangerous of the replicants Deckard is looking for, is determined to find a cure for his short life span.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal.

Movie Review The Stray

The Stray (2017) 

Directed by Mitch Davis 

Written by Mitch Davis, Parker Davis

Starring Michael Cassidy, Sarah Lancaster 

Release Date October 6th, 2017 

The Stray is one ridiculously terrible movie. This family adventure about a family that takes in a stray dog that they name Pluto opens with a nearly deadly lightning strike and only gets weirder and more bizarrely bad from there. The film purports to be a true story written and directed by Mitch Davis about his own family dog. However, there doesn’t appear to be any truth that was actually captured in this silly, unrealistic screenplay filled with characters who are like aliens enacting human emotions.

The Stray stars Michael Cassidy as Mitch Davis, a wannabe screenwriter who works as a script assistant at a Hollywood studio. Mitch’s long hours of reading and noting other people’s screenplays has distanced him from his family to the point where his wife, Michelle (Sarah Lancaster) is worried that they won’t be able to keep their family together. An incident where their two-year-old daughter wanders off while Mitch is reading scripts is the final straw leading them to leave Los Angeles for Colorado.

In Colorado, Mitch is supposed to be writing screenplays but the families recently acquired stray dog Pluto gets much of his attention. Mitch and Pluto run together, wrestle and generally bond while the dog seems intent on bringing Mitch and his son Christian closer together. When father and son finally agree to spend time together on a hiking trip, it’s a natural that Pluto would join them, but when tragedy strikes, well, you will have to see for yourself.

Where do I begin to tell you about the infinite horrors of The Stray? For one, Sarah Lancaster is a professional actress. She was on the television series Chuck, and she was really good. What is she doing here? She’s, at the very least, the least stilted performer in the movie. Sadly, she is a supporting player and spends most of her scenes playing a stereotypically nagging wife. Considering the charisma-free talents of co-star Michael Cassidy, you will be thinking a lot about Lancaster’s all too brief performance.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal

Movie Review Battle of the Sexes

Battle of the Sexes (2017) 

Directed by Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton

Written by Simon Beaufoy 

Starring Steve Carell, Emma Stone, Andrea Riseborough, Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, Alan Cumming

Release Date September 22nd, 2017 

I’ve spent a few days wrestling with why I don’t love the new, true life drama Battle of the Sexes from two of my favorite directors, Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton. The directors of the wonderful Little Miss Sunshine and the sublime Ruby Sparks have delivered a solid effort in Battle of the Sexes, but there is just something lacking. It’s not the performances either, as both Emma Stone and Steve Carell deliver standout takes on real life counterparts Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs. So just what’s wrong with Battle of the Sexes?

Battle of the Sexes tells the story of the 1972 tennis match-up that pitted women’s liberation, in the form of female tennis champion Billy Jean King, versus the self-proclaimed champion of male chauvinism, Bobby Riggs, himself a former tennis champion from some years earlier. King had recently left the American Lawn Tennis Association to help launch the new Women’s Tennis Association after a fallout over equal pay with ALTA’s leadership, headed up by Howard Kramer (Bill Pullman).

It was a huge moment for women’s tennis as King and her manager, Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman) risked everything to take the world’s top female tennis stars out onto their own tour with the goal of proving they could earn just as much money as male tennis champions. It was an even bigger moment for King as the new tour also found her in a new relationship, as she began to find her sexuality for the first time by falling in love with a hairdresser named Marylin Barnett (Andrea Riseborough). All the while she’s married to her devoted husband Larry (Austin Stowall) and could lose everything if people found out about her affair.

Complicating Billy Jean’s life further is Riggs, who challenged King early in 1972, just after the launch of the WTA and after she ignored his pleas, challenged fellow women’s champion Margaret Court just as Court was coming off a recent upset win over Billy Jean. Court would go on to lose to Riggs and force Billy Jean to be the one to challenge Riggs in order to save face for women’s tennis and their potential earning power.

As you can tell from that description, there is a pretty terrific and dramatic story in Battle of the Sexes. So why doesn’t it work? Much of the problem comes from Academy Award-winning screenwriter Simon Beaufoy’s script, which fails to parse the parody-level male chauvinism with the actual sexism that Billy Jean King was up against. Beaufoy’s script renders Bobby Riggs as a lovable conman who used chauvinism as a way of marketing and not the cruel dismissal of women tennis players it actually was.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Flatliners

Flatlines (2017) 

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev

Written by Ben Ripley 

Starring Elliot Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, Kiersey Clemons, Kiefer Sutherland

Release Date September 29th, 207 

Flatliners is a remarkably bad movie. I love Elliot Page; he is a very compelling and charismatic actor. Why has he been marginalized so much that he felt she needed to make this bizarrely dumb movie? What compelled him and the very talented director Niels Arden Oplev, director of the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, to think this movie was a good idea? Why did anyone think that remaking a movie as bad as the original Flatliners was a good idea? The Joel Schumaker directed 1990 Flatliners is a terrible movie and somehow this version manages to be worse than that. I’m baffled.

Flatliners stars Eliot Page as Courtney, a medical student who is plagued by the memory of the death of her younger sister in an accident that was her fault. Nine years after the accident Courtney has become consumed by the idea of knowing whether or not there is an afterlife where she might atone for her sin. Wanting to know about the afterlife she conceives of an experiment where she will have fellow med students stop her heart and let her die for a few minutes before bringing her back with the secrets of death.

Joining Courtney for the experiment is Sophia (Kiersey Clemons) and Jamie (James Norton) a trust fund kid who Courtney assumes is just reckless enough to go along with the plan. Dragged into the experiment are Ray (Diego Luna) and Marlo (Nina Dobrev) who jump in when Sophia and Jamie struggle to bring Courtney back to life. If you bought into the idea that Courtney might not come back after her first Flatline you might just be the audience for this movie. The complete lack of suspense in this scene doesn’t prevent lots of heavy breathing and forced tension.

Of course, Courtney must come back to life because her subsequent hallucinations are the source of most of the film’s jump scares. Courtney decides to keep the jump-scare-itis she contracted from flatlining to herself and when Jamie sees her thriving, answering difficult questions, relearning how to play the piano, as if her brain has been rewired by flatlining, he decides he must do it next. The film again must give us the forced fake tension of whether he’s going to come back or not. He does and then it’s party montage time because the last thing this movie needs is to do anything we can’t predict.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal

Movie Review Logan

Logan (2017) 

Directed by James Mangold

Written by Scott Frank, James Mangold, Michael Green 

Starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Richard E. Grant, Hal Holbrook, Stephen Merchant 

Release Date March 3rd, 2017 

When I first saw Logan, the latest spin-off of the X-Men franchise, I was not impressed. There was so much hype, so much discussion about how the R-Rating would finally allow Wolverine to be Wolverine. Then I saw the film and found it to be as conventional as any of the other X-Men movies with a little bit of gore tacked on for fan service. So, what’s changed for me since March of this year? Why was watching Logan at home on a DVD screener from the studio so different from watching the film in theaters earlier this year?

Logan once again stars Hugh Jackman in the role of Logan aka Wolverine. When we see him, he’s sleeping in the back of a fancy stretch limousine and gang members are trying to steal the tires. Logan tries to convince the men to leave peacefully but they prefer to attack him. In defense of his expensive vehicle, and with little care for his own well-being, Logan launches into a grisly battle and leaves several of the thieves’ dead.

From there we travel across the border to Mexico where Logan is hiding the debilitated Professor X (Patrick Stewart). With the help of another mutant named Kaliban (Stephen Merchant), Logan cares for Professor X by doping him up with medication to keep his powers neutralized and to keep him from remembering that he was responsible for killing a lot of people when he suffered a seizure several years ago that led the government to consider his mind a weapon of mass destruction.

The tiny, insular world that Logan has built for himself is upended when he meets Gabriella (Elizabeth Rodriguez). Gabriella wants to hire Logan to drive her and a girl she claims is her daughter, Laura, (Daphne Keen) to North Dakota where a group of fellow mutants is expected to help them cross the border to a place they call Eden. Unfortunately, Gabriella is being hunted by Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), the low-life leader of a group called The Reavers. It’s Pierce’s job to eradicate mutants that won’t fight for the evil Transigen corporation.

The plotting of Logan is simple and straight forward and I failed to give the film credit for that simplicity in my original review. Keeping things clear and easy to follow in the complex and desperately crowded super-hero genre is surely something to be praised. Logan has a clear and simple goal, get out of the country alive at all costs and if unable, make sure you die, and take as many Reavers with you as possible. The motivation is clear, and all the action is linked strongly to that motivation.

Find my full length revie in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review American Made

American Made (2017) 

Directed by Doug Liman 

Written by Gary Spinnelli 

Starring Tom Cruise, Domnhall Gleeson, Sarah Wright Olsen, Caleb Landry Jones 

Release Date September 29th, 2017 

American Made stars Tom Cruise as Barry Seal, a real life character who was at the center of the drug, guns, and South American contras controversies of the late 70s and 80s. Barry was just an airline pilot for TWA until the CIA caught wind of his trafficking in Cuban cigars. Sensing that Barry has just the kind of moral flexibility that the CIA needs, Agent Shaffer (Domnhall Gleeson) recruits him to run reconnaissance missions in South America, spying on supposed communist outposts.

Barry graduates to the drug trade when he is kidnapped by the Medellin cartel during a stopover in Columbia. They’ve caught on to Barry’s kamikaze missions and figure he’s the man who can help them get their product into America. Barry is eager to agree and becomes the first American welcomed into Pablo Escobar’s inner circle. Meanwhile, the CIA willingly looks the other way on Barry’s drug trade as long he’s willing to fly illegal guns to the Contras in Guatemala for their supposed fight against the Sandinistas.

This is all pretty crazy stuff and, as directed by Doug Liman, the absurdity starts almost from the beginning and never seems to let up. Barry Seal has no business being at the center of the biggest intelligence and drug controversies in American history and yet here he is, thrust onto the stage with only a giant grin and his moral flexibility to keep him from being killed. Indeed, nothing seems to phase Barry, whether it’s the potential of being shot out of the sky, being shot on the ground, getting arrested, or trying to find places to stuff the millions of dollars in cash his new lifestyle has awarded him with.

Much of the story of American Made has the bizarre atmosphere of my favorite American history podcast, The Dollop, with comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds. As I watched the film, I could not help but imagine the extraordinary comic spin Dave and Gareth would put on this story. One scene in particular has the perfect level of insanity that The Dollop lives for. In this scene Barry is attempting to avoid military planes that have been sent to guide him to a military base to arrest him.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer

Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer 

Directed by Joseph Cedar 

Written by Joseph Cedar 

Starring Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi, Hank Azaria, Steve Buscemi, Michael Sheen, Dan Stevens 

Release Date April 14th, 2017 

As a critic, it’s hard not to get tired of seeing the same kind of movie over and over again. Conventional three-act stories with stock heroes and predictable villains or simple romances with happy endings get tiresome after a while. It’s really nice to experience a movie with a different style, even if that movie isn’t entirely satisfying. The new movie Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer is, at the very least, a nice departure from the norm.

Norman Oppenheimer is rather strange and kind of pathetic. He is the type of man who insinuates himself into the business of others. When we meet Norman, he is accosting the assistant of a high-powered New York financier and attempting to finagle a meeting that he hopes might make him some money. Norman’s business isn’t much of a business, you see; he considers himself a consultant whose job is to connect one person to another person in hopes that each will give him something for making the connection between the two.

We get no sense of how successful Norman is as a ‘consultant’ but he has a nice suit, and when he meets an Israeli politician who he sees as a business opportunity, he’s able to drop a big bucks present on him, though not without wincing at the price. Norman hopes to get the politician, Micha Eshel (Lior Ashknazi) to attend a dinner being held by another New York big shot in hopes that making the connection will create opportunities for himself.

Three years after this scheme fails, we find that Norman and Micha have remained friends and for once Norman’s schmoozing has paid off. Micha is now the Israeli Prime Minister and when he spies Norman at a New York fundraiser, he welcomes him as if he were family — family he doesn’t speak to regularly and does not return phone calls to, but still family. Norman’s new connection, no matter how tenuous, remains lucrative to him as the financiers who would not meet with him before are suddenly eager to do business.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community 

Classic Movie Review House of Games

House of Games (1987) 

Directed by David Mamet 

Written by David Mamet 

Starring Joe Mantegna, Lindsay Crouse 

Release Date October 16th, 1987 

That David Mamet is one of the greatest writers for the stage and film we’ve seen in the past 30 years is well known. But, in 1987, he was a playwright who dabbled in screenwriting, and no one had seen him direct anything not on the stage. Thankfully, Mamet was so in demand that he could make a demand to direct his first film, which debuted 30 years ago this weekend. The movie is called House of Games and Mamet proved that not only was he a master of words, but he could direct the hell out of a movie.

House of Games stars Lindsey Crouse, Mamet’s then wife, as Margaret Ford, a successful psychiatrist and author who is stuck in a rut. The success of her book has her longing for more excitement in her life, as returning to her routine of seeing patients holds little of anything new for her. Even when one of her patients, an inveterate gambler, pulls a gun and threatens to kill himself, Margaret seems non-plussed. She manages to get him to give her the gun, and then finds that he is on the verge of suicide over a debt he owes to a gambler.

Frustrated with her inability to actually affect positive change in her patient, she decides that she might be able to rid him of his debt and give him a chance at recovery. That night, she arrives at a bar, called The House of Games, where she quickly finds the gambler, Mike (Joe Mantegna), who holds her patients’ marker, though the $25,000 he claimed to have owed is only a mere $800.00. Mike offers to wipe the debt clean if Margaret helps him in a poker con against a rich Texan he’s playing against in a back room. She agrees and the real plot of House of Games begins to whir into motion.

Joe Mantegna is a terrific actor, but he's never been better than when directed by his friend, Mamet. Mantegna walked the boards for numerous Mamet productions in Chicago and New York and he understands Mamet’s rhythm in a way that few other actors have ever taken to it. Not the most handsome guy, Mantegna manages to come off sexy in House of Games for the sheer ballsy confidence of his con-man character. When he reads Lindsey Crouse’s tells and explains to her how he knows that she wants to sleep with him more than she wants to write a book about him, it’s a scene as hot as any sex scene.

The dialogue and the con-man theory on display in House of Games is far more important than the film’s plot. When the twist happens at the beginning of the third act, it’s hard to feel sorry for the person who is being conned, as it feels as if it should have been obvious. A scene where the con is laid bare while a character listens from a safe, hidden, distance plays as darkly comic rather than a shocking reveal, and I can’t help but feel that Mamet intends it just that way.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community 

Movie Review Maudie

Maudie (2017) 

Directed by Aisling Walsh 

Written by Sherry Wright

Starring Sally Hawkins, Ethan Hawke 

Release Date April 14th, 2017 

Published September 15th, 2017 

I’ve never been a fan of the heartstring tuggers. I find such things cloying and manipulative and I am far too cynical such things. And yet, even I am not immune to having my heartstrings tugged. The recently released biopic Maudie, starring the lovely Sally Hawkins, plucked every string like a classic string quartet. The story of real-life Nova Scotia-based artist Maude Lewi,s who achieved minor fame in the 1950s for her homespun paintings, is the rare tear-jerker with the cinematic skill to back up the uplift.

Maude, (Sally Hawkins) or Maudie to her family and friends, is a mousy woman who struggles with debilitating arthritis in her hands and ankles. She’s struggled to get by throughout life but has managed to carry one pregnancy. The baby was sadly lost just after birth, but otherwise she’s lived in the shadow of her brother and aunt who believe they know what is best for her. However, when Maude’s brother Richie sells her family home without telling her, Maude finally finds the courage to strike out on her own.

At the local market in her small-town home in Nova Scotia, Maude hears the local fishmonger, Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke), advertising that he’s looking for a woman to clean his small home. Seeing an opportunity, Maude accepts the position and willingly endures Everett’s brutish, shy bullying. Ill-suited to female company, Everett is defensive and mean at first but slowly warms to having Maude around and the two begin a very slow walk toward the altar.

One day, when Everett fails to deliver fish to the summer home of a visiting New York socialite, Sandra (Kari Matchett), the socialite comes to Everett and Maude’s home to get her fish delivered. While there she spies Maude’s brilliantly beautiful and childlike paintings and is struck by their beauty. When she gets her fish, Sandra negotiates to also receive some hand-painted post cards from Maude. The cards are a hit, and they begin to sell at the local market as well.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community at Vocal. 

Movie Review Stronger

Stronger (2017) 

Directed by David Gordon Green 

Written by John Pollono 

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Tatiana Maslany, Miranda Richardson, Clancy Brown

Release Date September 22nd, 2017 

Published September 24th, 2017 

Stronger stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Jeff Bauman, a man who lost his legs to the bombing at the 2013 Boston Marathon. Before the marathon, Jeff was just an anonymous Costco employee who loved the Red Sox and wanted to reconcile with his girlfriend Erin (Tatiana Maslany) who dumped him because he rarely showed up when he was supposed to. On April 15, 2013, Jeff finally showed up at the Boston Marathon in the hope that his homemade sign cheering Erin on to the finish line might win her back.

Stronger was directed by David Gordon Green who directs the film with an aim for authenticity. The raw style of the early portion of Stronger is as powerful as the story itself as the look of the film captures a feeling of real life. Once the bombs go off and we know that Jeff has been badly injured the story turns to Erin who wasn’t sure that Jeff had come that day as he’d so often failed to show up. Her search to find out if he’d actually been there that day is incredibly affecting especially as she finds herself overrun by his brutish Boston family and friends who aren’t so kind to the girl who dumped their boy.

Maslany is a wonderful actress whose face communicates nearly as much as her words. She’s wearily beautiful, sad but strong. She feels guilt for having been the reason that Jeff was there that day but there is a limit to how bad she’s willing to feel about it. It’s a powerhouse performance and one that I hope will remain in people’s minds through the awards season. Maslany’s best scene is yet another break up between her and Jeff where she refuses to be his emotional punching bag and puts aside her pity for his loss in order to protect herself from his emotional abuse. The scene is raw and emotional and weighty, and Maslany is brilliant.

Naturally, however, Stronger lives and dies on the performance of Jake Gyllenhaal and it is yet another powerful and effective performance. Gyllenhaal crafts a wart and all performance as Jeff Bauman and the film is smart to embrace all sides of this complex man who refused to see himself as a hero who survived a terrorist attack but rather as just a victim. In his mind, all he did was get blown up, he doesn’t see that surviving was heroic in its own way and living beyond the loss and pain was inspiring.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal