Movie Review Asteroid City

Asteroid City (2023) 

Directed by Wes Anderson 

Written by Wes Anderson 

Starring Jason Schwartzman, Edward Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, Tilda Swinton, Willem Dafoe, Jeffrey Wright

Release Date June 23rd, 2023 

Published June 23rd, 2023 

I adore the work of writer-director Wes Anderson. As a film critic with more than 20 years of experience writing about movies, Anderson's work has an unusual appeal for me. I see so many movies that look the same, go for the same goals, demonstrate the same filmmaking technique, and though they can be quite good or not good, the sameness of most of what I see becomes monotonous. Then, along comes a Wes Anderson movie like an alien from another planet. Instead of striving to place his characters in a place we can recognize and identify with them in a typical fashion, Anderson's style creates a surreal reality all its own. 

In his first feature film, Bottle Rocket, the characters were colorful and odd amid a realistic landscape. Since then, The Royal Tenenbaums began a turn for Anderson that led to more and more of a surrealist perspective. Anderson is a fan of artifice, and he brings artifice forward in his cinematography and production design. In his newest, remarkably ingenious work, called Asteroid, the surrealist production design is intended to logically marry the stage and film. It's as if Wes Anderson wanted to adapt a play into a movie but wanted to bring both the play and the movie forward at once. It's an exceptionally silly, funny, brilliant move. 

Trying to describe the plot of Asteroid City is rather pointless. Wes Anderson isn't so much interested in his plot. Rather, it's a Wes Anderson style of comedy, a series of odd, awkward, and often various funny scenes that may or may not be moving forward a plot. On the surface, we are following photographer and family man, Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), as he takes his kids across the country and their car breaks down in the oddball small town of Asteroid City. Luckily, they were on their way here anyway as Augie's oldest son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan), is to compete for a science scholarship. 

Asteroid City is the real star of Asteroid City. At the center of the town, which is made up of, perhaps four locations, is a giant crater where an asteroid landed in 3200 B.C. The town grew up around the asteroid as scientists and military men seek to understand the asteroid. Tilda Swinton is the top scientist and Jeffrey Wright is the military man. Things get crazy when an alien comes to Earth and takes the asteroid. The arrival of an alien causes the town, and all of its visitors, including Augie and his four kids, celebrity actress, Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johannson) and her genius daughter, Dina (Grace Edwards). 

Augie begins a tentative flirtation with Midge, their tiny cabins are right next door to each other, and Woodrow starts a budding relationship with Dinah as they work with their fellow genius kids, played by Sophia Lillis and Ethan Josh Lee to study the alien while also making sure the rest of the world knows that the alien exists, much to the chagrin of the military and their parents. The genius kids also work with Tilda Swinton's scientist to try and determine where the alien went and whether or not the alien is dangerous or not. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Nut Job 2 Nutty By Nature

The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature (2017)

Directed by Cal Brunker

Written by Cal Brunker, Scott Bindley, Bob Barlen

Starring Will Arnett, Maya Rudolf, Jackie Chan, Katherine Heigl 

Release Date August 11th, 2017 

To call out The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature for creative bankruptcy would be as futile as calling out Congress for its corruption. Sure, both of those assessments are of equal accuracy but they are also empty facts of life that aren’t going to change simply because we point them out. So, what then do we make of The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature? Now that we’ve accepted the creative bankruptcy what is left for us to ponder?

The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, picks up where 2014’s The Nut Job left off with Surly Squirrel (Will Arnett) and his woodland pals living the high life in their adopted home inside a nut shop. The gravy train of free nuts seems endless but Surly’s gal-pal Andie (Katherine Heigl) remains worried. Andie wants everyone to get out of the nut shop and go forage in the park just in case something ever happens to their gravy train. Her concerns are laughed off until something does happen and the nut shop explodes, thankfully with our characters on the outside.

Left homeless and without a food source, Surly leads his crew back into the park only to find that the town’s corrupt Mayor (Bobby Moynihan), who literally has the phrase EmBzzler as his license plate, is demolishing the park in favor of an amusement park filled with garish, overpriced and highly unsafe rides; because apparently demolishing the park isn’t enough, kids need to know that the Mayor is getting kickbacks for his unsafe choices. Hey, what kid doesn’t love plots about corrupt politicians?

Naturally, the animal pals look to Surly for a plan and he’s got a whopper, a literal war with the machines that are tearing up the park. This leads to an action scene in which the animals battle bulldozers and earth-movers and cause as much damage to the park as the bulldozers and earth-movers were doing without the aid of the animals attempting to destroy them. When our furry friends are thwarted in their efforts they must find a new home or find another way to fight back that doesn’t get them all killed.

In case the plot description didn’t grab you don’t worry because The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature has a brand-new character that is guaranteed to go right for your wallet. Jackie Chan provides the voice of Mr. Feng, a cute little mouse who was once a forest dweller but was driven to the city by the same corrupt Mayor now taking away Surly’s home. Mr. Feng’s schtick is that though he and his fellow mice are adorable they cannot stand being called cute and when they are called cute they react with violence.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle (2017) 

Director Destin Daniel Cretton

Written by Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham, Marti Noxon 

Starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, Max Greenfield, Sarah Snook, Naomi Watts

Release Date August 11th, 2017 

When I was an up and coming young radio talk show host, I had the privilege of interviewing author Jeanette Walls about her remarkable memoir The Glass Castle. Normally, in prepping for an interview in talk radio, you don’t have time to read entire books, you’re forced to skim and pick and choose important portions to discuss in the brief time you have with your subject. In the case of The Glass Castle however, I was lucky enough to have a full weekend and in that weekend, I read the entire book because I simply could not stop myself.

The adage has it that you should never meet your heroes because they never live up to your idealized version of them. Jeanette Walls defied that adage in every way in my brief interview. Just as in her book she was charming, erudite, earthy, and fascinating. She had the kind of wit that comes from combining the mountains of West Virginia with the privilege of Park Avenue. In short, she was as delightful in voice, it was a phone interview, as she was in written form.

Given how harrowing that written form was, the human result is that much more remarkable. It is this version of Jeanette Walls that I took with me into the film adaptation of her remarkable memoir The Glass Castle. The film version stars Academy Award Winner Brie Larson and thank heaven for her, she resembled the Jeanette Walls of my brief but exciting memory.

The Glass Castle stars Larson as Jeanette Walls in 1989 when her career as a gossip columnist for New York Magazine has brought her the kind of fame and security she could never have imagined while growing up in poverty on a West Virginia mountainside. This Jeanette Walls is perfectly coiffed, stylishly dressed, and on the arm of a handsome, nebbishy financial adviser, played by New Girl star Max Greenfield, giving her even more of the fiscal security she never knew as a girl.

We also meet that young, insecure version of Jeanette, played by a pair of young actresses, Chandler Head and Ella Anderson, whose brilliant but damaged father Rex (Woody Harrelson) and scatterbrained artist mother Rose Mary (Naomi Watts) shuttle her from one place to the next always outrunning some bill collector or agent of law enforcement. When she was very young, alongside her three siblings, these changes in scenery seemed like an adventure with her father as part ringmaster and part wizard. As Jeanette comes of age however, the magic begins to wear off and the stench of her father’s alcoholism and emotional abuse becomes unbearable.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Annabelle Creation

Annabelle Creation (2017) 

Directed by David F. Sandberg 

Written by Gary Dauberman 

Starring Stephanie Stigman, Talitha Bateman, Lulu Wilson, Anthony La Paglia, Miranda Otto

Release Date August 11th, 2023 

I tried, I really did. I tried to give Annabelle: Creation the benefit of the doubt. I tried to go with the idiot premise that demons possess dolls and small children and are capable of massive amounts of destruction and horror but are constantly thwarted by locked, wooden doors. I gave this movie the chance to explain where the Annabelle doll that has been passed down from the equally silly The Conjuring movies came from and how it came to be a cursed item. I tried, but nothing in the movie convinced me why it was frightening, suspenseful or even mildly discomforting.

Annabelle Creation is intended as the origin story for the doll that we’ve seen locked away in the home Ed and Lorraine Warren, the heroes/real-life con-artists, from The Conjuring movies. Indeed, Annabelle is creepy looking but not in a menacing way — more of a, "Why did anyone think this would be attractive to anyone?" sort of way. Seriously, what child would ever want to own a two and a half foot tall, bug-eyed, pig-tailed, proto-dummy like Annabelle? If you’re thinking that Annabelle: Creation might answer that question you are sorely mistaken.

After we are introduced to the tragic backstory of the man who created the Annabelle doll, played dutifully by a disinterested Anthony La Paglia, we are thrust several years into the future where La Paglia and his now bed-ridden wife, played by a slumming-for-a-paycheck Miranda Otto, have taken in half a dozen orphans and their Nun caretaker, Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Sigman). We already know this is a terrible idea because we know what movie we are seeing; the girls meanwhile are about to go through the motions of the plot and try to convince us we haven’t seen all of this before.

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Short Term 12

Short Term 12 (2013) 

Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton 

Written by Destin Daniel Cretton 

Starring Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr, Lakeith Stanfield, Kaitlyn Dever, Rami Malek, Melora Waters 

Release Date August 23rd, 2013 

With the release of The Glass Castle on August 12, director Destin Daniel Cretton is stepping into his first major Hollywood feature. Will he be ready for the pressure that comes with bigger budgets, bigger stars, studio involvement, and the inherent issues that come from attempting to adapt a vaunted best-selling memoir to the big screen? That question will only be answered in a review of The Glass Castle. What we do know is, if The Glass Castle is half the movie that Cretton’s breakthrough feature Short Term 12 is it will be worth the price of a ticket.

Short Term 12 tells the story of counselors working at a short-term home for troubled kids. Grace, played by Brie Larson, is the lead counselor at the home who feels as if she’s seen it all from the children in her care. Naturally, she’s in for a surprise with the arrival of Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) who reflects so much of Grace’s own troubled childhood back at her that it throws the normally well put together Grace into a minor tailspin.

The key to the storytelling in Short Term 12 is intimacy. Director Cretton’s style is up close and personal with tight two person shots that enhance the moments of incredible, realistic intimacy as confessions are made, moments are had, and especially when tragedy strikes. Cretton does a wonderful job of capturing extraordinary moments while also remaining aware of the bigger picture story he’s telling.

The director is aided by a standout cast led by Larson whose big, beautiful beating heart comes through in every scene. Grace may have troubles of her own, but she never loses track of her empathy. Empathy is both Grace’s greatest strength and her biggest weakness as having too much to give leaves one vulnerable, and Grace’s vulnerabilities are a big part of the story being told in Short Term 12.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Can't Buy Me Love

Can't Buy Me Love (1987) 

Directed by Steve Rash 

Written by Michael Swerdlick

Starring Amanda Peterson, Patrick Dempsey, Courtney Gains, Dennis Dugan 

Release Date August 14th, 1987

Can’t Buy Me Love is bankrupt at its core. The 1987 teen comedy starring Patrick Dempsey and the late Amanda Peterson has the trappings of a sweet 80s teen comedy about nerds and popular kids but lacks something in its heart. There is a cynicism at the center of Can’t Buy Me Love that the makers attempt to paper over by rushing to a climax that never feels right or especially earned.

Ronald Miller is our typical high school movie geek, stringy, shy, poorly dressed and into science. His crush is the most popular girl in school, Cindy, a cheerleader with a boyfriend who is now in college and is neglecting her affection. While Ronald pines from the seat of his lawnmower (he mows her lawn to the point he’s saved up $1000 while seeming to have only ever mowed Cindy’s lawn), Cindy is putting on a brave face about her absent boyfriend.

The plot kicks in when Cindy borrows an expensive outfit from her mother’s closet and ruins it. She desperately needs $1000 to replace the outfit and through plot contrivance, Ronald and his cold hard cash happen to be at the same mall attempting to buy a telescope, another 80s nerd signifier. Ronald offers his cash for Cindy to buy and replace her mom’s outfit in exchange for Cindy to go out with him and help him break into the cool clique at school.

The plan works as Cindy’s popularity rubs off on Ronald almost immediately. The two even begin to confide in one another and get close until Ronald misses his cue to kiss her for real and the two end up in a staged break up where Ronald compounds his blunders with cruel words he thinks are part of the act. Cindy is hurt and Ronald gets what he wants but not without a warning from her that being popular is harder than it looks. That’s what the makers of Can’t Buy Me Love don’t understand; while it goes through the motions of a lame redemption story for Ronald, the real story and the heart of the story belongs to Cindy whose struggle to maintain an image of perfection is harming her very soul.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Detroit

Detroit (2017) 

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Written by Mark Boal

Starring John Boyega, Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Jacob Lattimore, Kaitlyn Dever

Release Date July 28th, 2017 

Recently I listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s incredible podcast Revisionist History and in the very first episode he discussed a fascinating sociological concept called Moral Licensing. Moral Licensing is in essence doing something that is right and then using that right action, essentially a good deed, to justify bad behavior. Gladwell’s example was a painter in 19th Century England, Elizabeth Thompson, whose painting, titled Roll Call, became the first by a female artist to take a respected placement in the Royal Academy of Art. Unfortunately, the good deed by the male dominated Royal Academy of featuring the remarkable painting gave them, in their minds, the bona fides to justify not electing Thompson to become a member of the Royal Academy. They’d done their good deed and had nothing, in their minds left to prove.

I thought a great deal about Moral Licensing as I watched Kathryn Bigelow’s remarkable new film Detroit. This story about the riots that raged in Detroit, Michigan in 1967 and more specifically about an incident of police brutality that resulted in the deaths of three innocent black men, at the Algiers Hotel, led me to wonder if just becoming a police officer—a peace officer, someone whose job in the world is to protect people—gives some lesser officers the notion that they have moral license to do as they please. They’ve proven their bona fides as a good person by offering to protect the innocent, thus how they do their jobs is justified by virtue of having accepted the position.

I am not generalizing here; I respect police officers and the remarkable difficulty of their job. Scientifically and psychologically, however, there is a kernel of truth here. It could happen to anyone in such a position: a doctor, a politician, even a film critic who uses his position as a writer to espouse a point of view and then, if his point of view is well-viewed, he or she can take license to go further and espouse further and potentially do harm because they feel they have a moral high ground that doesn’t really exist.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media