Documentary Review Faces Places

Faces Places (2017) 

Directed by Agnes Varda, JR 

Written by Agnes Varda

Starring Agnes Varda, JR 

Release Date June 28th 2017 

The grand lady of the French Cinema, Agnes Varda, may have made her final film. In interview with Indiewire.com, Varda told writer Eric Kohn that her new film, Faces Places, made with innovative French artist JR, would be a fitting final film. In the interview, Varda compares herself at 89 years old to a boxer potentially staying for one fight too many. She’s not "going to bed," as she puts it, she still has art installations to work on, but indeed the curtain may have come down on Agnes Varda at the Cinema.

If that is the case, Faces Places isn’t merely appropriate, it rings beautifully true as a summation of her filmic spirit and her lifelong dedication to the visages of the French lower middle class. Faces Places finds Varda working with JR, a French artist who has made his name with large scale installations in unusual places. JR travels France in a truck that looks like a giant camera. Indeed, it is a camera, inside, average people load in and get their picture taken and the photo emerges in large scale from the side of the truck like a Polaroid.

JR and Agnes’ sensibilities are the same as their ages are so very different. While they are feisty towards each other at times over their shared vision, Faces Places captures their warmth and obvious care for each other even as they entered the project as near strangers. Varda in many ways seems to be bestowing some of her legacy upon the young artist who is making the move into the cinema for the very first time with Faces Places, though whether he intends to stay in the film world is not mentioned in the film.

Throughout Faces Places this wonderful pair of artists roam the French countryside looking for unique faces and places to install large scale photography that is pasted to the sides of any structure people will allow them. In one of my favorite moments in any film in 2017, JR and Varda happen upon a rusty, rundown coal town that is preparing to tear down the last of a set of row-houses that once housed hundreds of coal miners and their families.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal

Movie Review Only the Brave

Only the Brave (2017) 

Directed by Joseph Kosinski 

Written by Ken Nolan, Eric Warren Singer

Starring Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, James Badge Dale, Taylor Kitsch, Jennifer Connelly 

Release Date October 8th, 2017 

Only The Brave is based on a harrowing true story. In 2013 the Granite Mountain Hotshots wildfire fighting team was sent to Yarnell Hill in Arizona to battle a wildfire. When the weather turned and the wind kicked up the flames in a new direction, 19 members of the Hot Shots team was caught behind the fire line. All 19 were killed despite their use of flame retardant covers which proved ineffective for this raging blaze.

Director Joseph Kosinski, a fine director of such solid efforts as Tron Legacy and Oblivion, brings the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots to life beautifully and painfully in Only the Brave. Taking the tale from the perspective of a new member of the squad, and ultimately the only man on the crew to survive the Yarnell Hill Fire, he was away from his team working as a scout, the film boils down the experience to a very human and relatable level that packs an emotional wallop.

Though it departs from the true story a tad, Only the Brave follows Brandon McDonough, a jobless, seemingly hopeless addict, who cleans up and looks for work as a firefighter. He arrives at the headquarters of the Hotshots in his hometown of Prescott, Arizona, with little experience, aside from EMT training course and looks to be a laughingstock to the members of the Hotshots crew. However, Supervisor and Hotshots boss, Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) recognizes something in McDonough and hires him on the spot.

In reality, McDonough was a three-year hotshot's vet when the Yarnell Hill fire occurred, but the film character is meant as an amalgamation, as well as an audience surrogate. McDonough, who takes on the nickname Donut because his new friends don’t like his name, is made a rookie so the film can use him to explain terminology and give us more insights into what a Hotshot does. It’s a good choice, if one that defies the true story.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review The Foreigner

The Foreigner (2017) 

Directed by Martin Campbell

Written by David Marconi 

Starring Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan, Dermot Mulroney 

Release Date October 13th, 2017 

It seems that I am not a big fan of the work of actor Pierce Brosnan. It’s not that I have an active dislike for the man, but rather, in looking at my cumulative opinion of his work over his 35-plus year career, I have only given Brosnan two positive reviews. Grant you, I have only been a critic for 20 years, but Brosnan was on TV for most of the time before I came into my profession. He had arguably his biggest successes in the James Bond franchise during my time as a critic. Then again, I don’t have a particularly high opinion of that franchise, either.

Thankfully, with the release of the terrorism-centered action movie, The Foreigner, I can legitimately say that I liked a movie starring Pierce Brosnan and not have to qualify it. Brosnan is genuinely thrilling in the role of a duplicitous Irish politician and former member of the Irish Republican Army. Brosnan is magnetic, and I loved the tiny shifts of his manner when he switched from practiced politician to trained terrorist and back again.

The Foreigner co-stars Jackie Chan as a man who has just lost his daughter to an IRA bomb. Well, that is to say that a supposed new faction of the IRA has claimed the bombing while people like Brosnan’s politician do their damnedest to distance themselves. It's part of Brosnan's charm that he can switch easily between the worlds of modern politician and former terrorist. In real life, in fact, more than a few IRA members labeled as terrorists years ago now hold powerful government positions in Ireland.

Chan’s Mr. Quan isn’t interested in how politicians want to frame the attacks; he believes Brosnan knows who the bombers are and he intends to use his skills as a former army ranger in Vietnam to force Brosnan to reveal who killed his daughter. Chan, like Brosnan, is quite riveting in this rare, dramatic role. Toning down his usual physicality, due to age as well as the needs of the plot, Chan’s Quan is a precision killer who takes pains only to kill the people who deserve it.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017) 

Directed by Angela Robinson 

Written by Angela Robison 

Starring Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, Bella Heathcote Oliver Platt, Connie Britton 

Release Date October 13th, 2017 

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women stars Luke Evans as Professor William Moulton Marston, the man who created the Wonder Woman comic book. Marston was an academic who studied and taught psychology before he somehow found himself creating a comic book as a way to sneak his psychological theories into mainstream thought. The character of Wonder Woman was created, according to the movie, as a composite of the two women in Marston’s life, his wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) and Olive (Bella Heathcote) their lover.

In 1928 Professor William Marston and his wife Elizabeth were working on creating the lie detector when they brought on a student helper named Olive. The attraction between Marston and Olive was immediately evident but what came forward, in something of a surprise, was Elizabeth’s equal desire for Olive and Olive’s similar feelings for Elizabeth. When the relationship is consummated, it's not long before word spreads around campus and all three are shunned.

For the next several years the trio lived together, raised children and explored the depths of their sexuality, an exploration that led Marston to discover bondage and S&M, an area that appealed to his libido and his intellect. In bondage Marston found an area of human psychology that matched his theory regarding Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance or DISC Theory. Marston believed that DISC theory was the ultimate way to understand human interaction, even stating that it could stop wars.

Marston also believed that DISC theory proved that women were better for world leadership than men. Women are more caring and thoughtful than men and thus are better suited to keep from going to war. The theory reflected in Marston’s own life where he was essentially married to two women who defined his life, whom he submitted to and who submitted to him equally. Luke Evans effortlessly communicates the intellect of Marston and his willingness to explore his own theories inside himself.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Classic Movie Review Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day (1993) 

Directed by Harold Ramis 

Written by Danny Rubin, Harold Ramis

Starring Bill Murray, Andie McDowell, Chris Elliott, Michael Shannon

Release Date February 12th, 1993 

Something keeps nagging at me about Groundhog Day, this week’s classic on the Everyone is a Critic Movie Podcast. I like the movie but something about Groundhog Day seems to bring out my inner pedant. Whether it’s the questionable timeline, the questionable motivation for those many timelines or something in the manner of Bill Murray’s slightly awkward performance, I can’t seem to embrace the film as fully as so many others have.

Groundhog Day stars Bill Murray as Phil Connors, a narcissistic Pittsburgh weather man who is tasked with traveling to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania for that yearly tradition of Groundhog Day. Punxsutawney has become famous for its Groundhog Festival at which the titular rodent, known around town as Phil, is pulled from his fake abode to announce whether he sees his shadow. The notion is that if the groundhog can see his shadow there will be six more weeks of winter.

Phil Connors can’t stand this assignment. He hates small towns nearly as much as he secretly hates himself. Phil is, to say the least, not a people person. He’s been to Punxsutawney for years for this assignment but has made no connections in town and barely stays long enough for the groundhog to finish his proclamation before hitting the road back to the big city. This year, however, will be different, very, very different.

For reasons that are never specified, Phil finds himself unable to leave Punxsutawney due to a snowstorm that he had predicted would not hit. Forced to spend another night, Phil finds himself waking up to find that it’s Groundhog Day all over again. Everything Phil experienced the day before is happening again in the exact same way. Phil is naturally quite disturbed but eventually settles on a nightmare that will end with another good night’s sleep. When the day repeats a third time, Phil is forced to accept that he’s stuck and how to deal with such bizarre circumstances.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review The Meyerowitz Stories

The Meyerowitz Stories (2017) 

Directed by Noah Baumbach 

Written by Noah Baumbach 

Starring Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Elizabeth Marvel

Release Date October 14th, 2017 

My friends and fellow podcasters on the "Everyone is a Critic" podcast like to joke about my disdain for Adam Sandler. They seem to believe that I harbor some personal grudge against the man. It’s not true but it makes for a funny running gag. In reality, I have a professional grudge against Adam Sandler, nothing personal. I am professionally irritated by Adam Sandler because he continually works so far below his talent.

That’s right, I believe Adam Sandler is talented. In fact, I believe Adam Sandler is remarkably talented. Unfortunately, he chooses to abandon his gifts in favor of a steady, high dollar paycheck and the chance to goof off with his friends. It’s irritating to me as a critic to watch a man I know can act pretending that he can’t. Make no mistake, Adam Sandler can act. When he works with a real director, one with vision and the ability to bend Sandler to his or her will, Sandler can deliver a genuine powerhouse performance. His new film, under the direction of Noah Baumbach, The Meyerowitz Stories, reinforces my point.

In The Meyerowitz Stories, Adam Sandler plays Danny, a single father to a college-bound daughter, Eliza (Grace Van Patten), and the son a respected sculptor and professor, Harold Meyerowitz (Dustin Hoffman). Danny has a wonderful relationship with his daughter and a terribly fraught relationship with his father. Unfortunately for him, Eliza is leaving for college and having recently broken up with Eliza’s mother, Danny is going to stay with his dad and dad’s flighty gal-pal Maureen (Emma Thompson).

Danny has a sister named Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) and a half-brother, Matthew (Ben Stiller), whom his father adores and can’t resist mentioning in front of Danny. Where Danny has never had a job, he was essentially a house husband and father after abandoning his musical aspirations, Matthew has moved to Los Angeles and become a successful financial advisor to celebrities. That Matthew left to escape their father, is something Harold ignores, and Danny is unaware of.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

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.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal

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.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal

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.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

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.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Facebook

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