Movie Review Shortwave

Shortwave (2017) 

Directed by Ryan Gregory Phillips 

Written by Ryan Gregory Phillips 

Starring Juanita Ringeling, Tina Feliciano, Nina Senicar, Kelly Fitzgerald 

Release Date October 16th, 2024 

Shortwave is at once exceptionally ambitious and completely insane. The film about a shortwave radio engineer and his wife dealing with the consequence of his having invented shortwave technology that can speak to lifeforms not of this Earth has remarkable ambition but lacks the budget and ability to meet that ambition. Part arty, pretentious nonsense and part low budget sci-fi exploitation, Shortwave is, at the very least unique.

The film begins with quite a good tracking shot as Isabel (Juanita Ringeling) leads her daughter into a bookstore and sits her down in a group of kids listening to a storyteller. Isabel then attends to the ladies’ room but when she comes out, all of the children, and the storyteller, are gone. Cut to some unspecified time later, a guilt-ridden Isabel barely registers emotions as she and her loving husband Josh (Cristobal Tapia Montt) move into a secluded new home.

Josh is an engineer working for a tech company that hopes to use shortwave radios to communicate with beings from another planet. The house belongs to the company and may or may not contain the secrets they’ve already discovered using Josh’s technology. As the couple settles slowly into their new home, Isabel begins to have strange visions related to the sounds on Josh’s radio, visions that she believes are clues to where she might find her daughter.

My description of the plot is much more direct than the film itself. Shortwave director Ryan Gregory Phillips wastes a great deal of screen time on arty pretentious nonsense. Shortwave is desperately padded by interminably long shots of Isabel posing in front of pretty outdoor backdrops. The blurry visuals at first seem like more arty pretentiousness until you see them in straight-ahead dialogue-based scenes and realize that the blurred edges may, in fact, be a shorthand to cover for the un-decorated portions of the set.

Find my full length review in the Futurism community on Vocal 

Movie Review Thank You For your Service

Thank You for Your Service (2017)

Directed by Jason Hall

Written by Jason Hall 

Starring Miles Teller, Haley Bennett, Joe Cole, Amy Schumer, Scott Haze 

Release Date October 15th, 2017 

Thank You for Your Service is a deeply respectful and respectable movie about veterans and PTSD. The film stars Miles Teller as Staff Sgt. Adam Schumann who is just returning from Iraq from a traumatic third tour of duty. Having been praised for his unique ability for locating roadside mines, Adam’s last experience in Iraq was seeing a friend shot in the head and him having dropped that friend as he carried him down the steps of a building under fire by terrorists

The guilt and shame are overwhelming and demonstrate one of the many ways that PTSD can manifest in a soldier. Adam’s two closest friends, Billy Waller (Joe Cole) and Tausolo ‘Solo’ Aieti (Beulah Koale) have their own kinds of PTSD. For Billy, the trauma is waiting back at home where his fiancée has cleared out their apartment and left without telling him. For Solo, he’s suffering from post-concussion syndrome, PTSD with a deep effect on his memory.

PTSD takes so many different forms that it is impossible to come up with one catchall treatment as we find out when Adam and Solo attempt to navigate the Veterans Affairs system and find themselves unable to find help that isn’t weeks or months away. The VA is swamped with PTSD patients whose traumas are manifested in numerous different ways. That there is no cure for PTSD. There’s barely even a proper diagnosis. It’s no wonder our vets are eager to go back to combat; it makes more sense than the bureaucracy waiting back at home.

Thank You For Service never shies away from portraying the hurt and trauma that comes from PTSD and the betrayal soldiers feel after making incredible sacrifices for their country only to spend weeks wrapped in red tape when they go for help. Suicidal ideation is one of many symptoms of PTSD and much of that may simply stem from the hopeless, helpless feeling engendered in waiting in endless VA lines only to buried in paperwork and delays in treatment.

Find my full length review in the Serve Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Suburbicon

Suburbicon (2017) 

Directed by George Clooney 

Written by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, George Clooney

Starring Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Noah Jupe, Oscar Isaac

Release Date October 27th, 2017 

Matt Damon stars in Suburbicon as Gardner, a man in debt to the mob and desiring to get rid of his wheelchair bound wife, Rose (Julianne Moore) so that he can be with Rose’s twin sister Margaret (Julianne Moore). Caught in the middle of Gardner’s scheme is his son, Nicky (Noah Jupe). When after Gardner’s wife is murdered, Nicky goes along to the police lineup, he spies his father intentionally failing to identify the killers. Here is where the façade of his father’s life comes tumbling down.

Meanwhile, in an entirely separate movie, a black family, the Mayer’s, has moved in next door to Gardner and his family. Suburbicon is set in the 1950s and so, naturally, the neighbors don’t take kindly to the sudden integration of their suburban enclave. While Gardner is plotting, and committing murders on one side of the fence, the rest of the neighborhood is busy trying to run the Mayers’ out of the neighborhood on the other side.

In some version of Suburbicon these two plots meet and make sense together. In this version of the movie however, the only connection between the plots is via editing them into what is only ostensibly the same movie. Somewhere, we can assume, these plots are meant to comment upon one another and make some deeper, metaphoric point but the whole final product that is Suburbicon is so muddled that it’s impossible to make out what that metaphoric meaning might be.

It's rare to watch a movie that has no tone or momentum. Suburbicon is a movie that just sort of happens in front of you. I watched the first hour of Suburbicon waiting for the movie to actually begin. I just assumed at some point that the movie would coalesce into some sort of identifiable narrative with identifiable characters and it just never happens. The film cuts between plots willy nilly and yet cannot find momentum even in chaotic dissonance.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill

Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill 

Directed by Jared Cohn

Written by Jared Cohn 

Starring Sara Malakul Lane, Richard Grieco, Dave Mustaine

Release Date October 27th, 2017 

How does a movie manage to be only 77 minutes long and still feel tedious? By ripping off the Saw franchise minus the wit and the skill? That’s certainly the case that is made by the new horror movie Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill which feels twice as long as it’s barely theatrical release run time. This dimwitted wannabe exploitation horror flick from former God-sploitation director Jared Cohn, director of the equally tedious God’s Club, wants to marry Saw to Herschel Gordon Lewis or Roger Corman but lacks even the skill to match those low budget heroes of the drive-in genre.

Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill is about an all-girl punk band called Kill Pussy Kill which is finishing one big gig and is headed to another down the road on Halloween night. Unfortunately, they catch the attention of a former Army Ranger (Dave Mustaine of Megadeth fame in voice only here) who decides that their days of smoking crack, sex in the back of the van debauchery is offensive to him and he’s going to teach them a lesson.

With the help of his buddy Dale (Richard Grieco), the Army Ranger, credited as The Mastermind, captures the band and locks them in a basement and proceeds to knock off as many clichés of the Saw franchise he can think of. The film employs Mustaine to provide gravel voiced warnings about ‘playing the game or else’ and lays out the nonsensical rules about how some of the band can escape if they are willing to kill other members of the band and blah blah blah; it’s like Saw if you only knew the premise of the franchise.

It’s funny, I can sense that the makers of the movie want me to give this movie a bad review. This is the kind of movie that wants to be able to tell you how much critics hate it. They want to offend a critic, that’s why they are making sure so many critics have access to the movie. The marketing campaign wants for critics to call the movie disgusting and talk about how exploitative it is so they can wear it like some unearned badge of honor. The title alone, Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill, tells you exactly what the filmmakers are after. 

Find my full length review in the Horror Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Same Kind of Different as Me

Same Kind of Different as Me (2017) 

Directed by Michael Carney 

Written by Ron Hall, Alexander Foard, Michael Carney 

Starring Renee Zellweger, Djimon Hounsou, Greg Kinnear, Jon Voight 

Release Date October 20th, 2017 

I have a genuine pity for the faith-based audience. Few audiences are as underserved as the faithful. And few audiences are as exploited as the faith based filmgoer. The people at Pure Flix have made their fortune exploiting this audience by serving them half-baked, poorly made movies that pander to their faith without serving it. Pure Flix has little interest in the quality of their work and exist solely to make a buck. Just look at the awful roster of Pure Flix movies and you will find it difficult to argue my point.

Same Kind of Different as Me is not much different than those other low quality offerings; it just had the decency to hire better actors. Renee Zellweger and Djimon Hounsou may be at the mercy of a low-quality script and production, but they are far too good at what they do to be dragged down by it. They are the reason that I can’t fully dislike Same Kind of Different as Me because when asked to deliver in big moments, their talent transcends the limitations of the Pure Flix machine.

Same Kind of Different as Me is told from the perspective of Ron Hall (Greg Kinnear), a Texas-based art dealer whose wife Deborah has recently passed away. Ron has arrived at a friend’s home to attempt to write a book about his wife but his voice-over in the film tells us he’s struggling. If, like me, you believe that voice-over is has become the bankrupt screenwriters worst crutch, get ready for a serious amount of torture in Same Kind of Different as Me which abuses this crutch.

As Ron tells the story, we flashback two years before Deborah passed away. Ron is being forced to come clean about being unfaithful and has been met by a challenge from Deborah. After she breaks off his relationship with his mistress, she forces Ron to pay penance by joining her at a mission where she serves food to the homeless. Here, Deborah is shocked to find Denver (Djimon Hounsou), a man she claims to have seen in a dream before having ever seen him in real-life.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review The Snowman

The Snowman (2017) 

Directed by Tomas Alfredson

Written by Peter Straughan, Hossein Amini 

Starring Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, J.K Simmons 

Release Date October 20th, 2017 

Before I formally go into my review of The Snowman, let me preface this review stating my respect for director Tomas Alfredson. In press interviews for The Snowman he is not sugar-coating the film’s problems. He’s been up front about the abrupt production time in Norway, the lack of a finished script and the reshoots that nevertheless failed to find the missing pieces of what is one truly jacked up puzzle of a movie.

The Snowman stars Michael Fassbender as the horrifically named detective Harry Hole. Harry is a drunk who likes to pass out and wake up in strange places on the frozen streets of Norway. When he’s relatively sober, Harry is a famed detective whose cases are studied for his remarkable investigative success. His latest case following his latest bender comes when he spies a junior detective, Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), sneaking away with confidential files.

Harry decides to take up the younger detective’s cause, investigating a series of bizarre missing person’s cases. Each of the cases focuses on blonde women with secrets of some sort that may or may not be related to sex or something; the film is comically unclear. The killer has a thing for snow which is also rather comical as the film is set in Oslo. When the younger detective mentions that snow is a trigger for the killer we are led to wonder just how big that body count might be considering the part of the world the killer inhabits.

While the serial killer story is the A-Plot, the B-Plot about Harry’s former home life is far more fleshed out and given more development. This is bizarre for a number of reasons but mostly because the stuff about Harry, his ex-girlfriend Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg), the son who doesn’t know Harry is his real father (Michael Yates) and Rakel’s suspiciously nice new boyfriend Matthias (Jonas Karlsson) is stunningly dull. Each time the film pauses for the B-Plot to take center stage the film comes to an abrupt, jarring halt.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Boo 2: A Madea Halloween

Boo 2: A Madea Halloween

Directed by Tyler Perry 

Written by Tyler Perry 

Starring Tyler Perry, Cassi Davis, Patrice Lovely, Tito Ortiz 

Release Date October 20th, 2017 

What is there to be said about Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Madea Halloween? You already know it’s not any good. We all know that Tyler Perry doesn’t give a damn about the quality of his work. It’s completely critic-proof. I am epically wasting my time writing a review of this, or really any of Perry’s work. And yet, I am somehow here to write a review of Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Madea Halloween. It really makes me begin to question my profession. Not completely, lord knows I wouldn’t want to get a real job.

Here is where I will make a vain attempt to describe a plot, of which there is little. Brian (Perry, in one of his three roles) continues to struggle as a parent to his daughter, Tiffany (Diamond White). Yes, despite Brian’s parenting success being the only arc of the first film, he still sucks as a parent and has to learn or teach(?) a new lesson to his horror of a daughter who, frankly, seems like a lost cause. Given her decision making, based on these two movies, it’s a wonder she’s still alive, let alone ready to donate her virginity to a doofus frat-guy.

It's a testament to Perry’s opinion of women that they range from whores to idiots to shrews. Whereas early in his career Perry seemed to have a modicum of respect for his female characters, that’s long gone. I would call Perry a misogynist, but I can’t be sure that the hateful way in which he portrays women in his two Halloween features is genuine disdain for women or his overall incompetence as a director and storyteller.

In case you think I am just lobbing P.C bombs, let’s profile Perry’s female characters in Boo 2! A Madea Halloween, shall we? First there is Tiffany, who is portrayed as a danger to herself and others after she is given a car by her mother despite having done little to warrant such a gift. She only gets the car because Perry portrays the mother as the kind of awful parent who buys her daughter’s affections with gifts and makes out with other men in front her ex-husband– in other words, she’s a castrating shrew.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

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