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.