Movie Review LBJ

LBJ (2017) 

Directed by Rob Reiner 

Written by Joey Hartstone 

Starring Woody Harrelson, Richard Jenkins, Bill Pullman, Jeffrey Donovan, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Release Date November 3rd, 2017 

I don’t understand racism. It’s strange to write that down but it’s no less true, racism doesn’t make any sense. Why does skin color matter? What is it about skin color that bothers people? What could possibly cause a person to believe that their skin makes them superior? It baffles me. Life is hard enough, why carry such an unnecessary and bizarre hatred on top of that? I find that in my life I need as many friends as I can make. The world makes more sense when you connect with people. To rule out connecting with someone over something like the color of their skin is just not something I can make any sense of.

I’m not seeking to understand racists; I know that they are just wrong in their hatred, but I can’t understand the conviction that drives them. Is it some sort of misguided notion of maleness? Tribalism that has yet to be evolved out of the species. What drives people to hate someone for a reason such as skin color? Hatred of any kind is hard on the soul. I am certainly not without hate, I hate racists, I hate those who hate the LGBTQ Community, I hate those who would seek to oppress others. Carrying that hate is the biggest burden of my life but I do it because I can’t not do it. My hatred makes sense because I hate on behalf of others. The hatred that comes from the racist simply makes no sense.

This is a longwinded way of getting around to reviewing the new Rob Reiner movie LBJ which hinges on the debate over the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The brilliant actor Richard Jenkins portrays a Senator Russell from Georgia whose hatred of black people has lost him to history to the point where I cannot recall his first name and would not be aware of his existence without this movie. That’s fair, he doesn’t deserve to be remembered. Nor do any of the Senators who opposed civil rights. Remembering that they opposed something as fundamental as civil rights for all people is enough of an awful legacy for these men.

LBJ paints a complex portrait of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. It is a heroic portrait but one that doesn’t shy away from the less heroic aspects of Lyndon Johnson who, before he became Vice President had consistently opposed civil rights legislation. President Johnson's change of heart wasn’t him being ‘woke’ to use the modern parlance, it was born of pragmatism, at once coldly calculated and genuinely felt. President Johnson could see the direction the country was moving in and was determined to remain relevant and, he had become friendly with his cook, a black woman who could not travel safely and comfortably from Washington D.C to Texas despite working for the Vice President of the United States.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Classic Movie Review Deathwish 4 The Crackdown

Deathwish 4 The Crackdown

Directed by J. Lee Thompson

Written by Gail Morgan Hickman

Starring Charles Bronson, Kay Lenz, John P. Ryan 

Release Date November 6th, 1987 

How in the world did the Death Wish franchise last for four movies? How did anyone with a brain figure that the story of vigilante Paul Kersey could simply linger for over a decade? It’s a bafflement and yet, in the first weekend of November 1987, Cannon Films managed to release Death Wish 4: The Crackdown and it somehow wasn’t the last of this limping, moronic, gun crazy, alpha male fantasy franchise.

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown finds Paul Kersey living in Los Angeles and running his architectural firm. Paul is dating a journalist named Karen (Kay Lenz) who has a daughter named Erica (Dana Barron). One night Erica hits the town with her boyfriend and tries some cocaine and then dies from an overdose. The loss consumes both Karen and Paul as she sets about using her reporting to track down the bad guys while Paul does it his way, through vigilante justice.

After Paul murders the dealer, he believes is directly responsible for Erica’s death, he finds he’s being watched. A man claiming to be Nathan White, a wealthy industrialist, wants to help Paul reap bloody vengeance on Los Angeles organized crime. He offers to get Paul the guns and the information he needs to battle the two biggest drug dealing factions in Los Angeles. Why? White claims to have had a daughter who also died from a drug overdose.

With White’s assistance, Paul begins murdering drug dealers on both sides of the two biggest crime families. While we are told that this is part of a plan by Paul to turn the two gangs against each other, ending their current détente, all we see is Paul randomly choosing targets on both sides and killing his way out of whatever spot he gets himself into. Paul is clumsy and slow, but the movie makes up for it by making it seem as if he never misses, even as every drug dealer in Los Angeles couldn’t shoot water while standing on a dock.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review A Bad Mom's Christmas

A Bad Mom's Christmas (2017) 

Directed by Scott Moore

Written by Jon Lucas 

Starring Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Susan Sarandon, Christine Baranski 

Release Date November 1st, 2017 

A Bad Moms Christmas is quite funny. The gags delivered by these very funny ladies work most of the time to great effect. So why don’t I love the movie? As much as I laughed at A Bad Mom’s Christmas, I was rolling my eyes during scenes that weren’t centered on off-color gags. For all the uproarious laughs brought on by the brilliant Kathryn Hahn, the non-gag scenes, the ones centered on moving forward the supposed plot of A Bad Moms Christmas, simply don’t hold up.

Mila Kunis is once again at the center of the Bad Moms universe as Amy, the put-upon single mom to two adorable teenagers. Amy is fretting about Christmas and the pressures that the holiday specifically puts on moms to make everything perfect. Amy’s perfect Christmas would be vegging out and watching Love Actually with her kids and her boyfriend Jesse (Jay Hernandez) and his daughter but that’s not going to happen.

Amy’s mom, Ruth (Christine Baransky), has decided to crash Christmas this year and she has big plans for her daughter’s Christmas. Ruth is Christmas crazy, and she immediately throws her daughter’s Christmas plans for a loop. In need of solace, Amy turns to her fellow Bad Moms, Kiki (Kristen Bell) and Carla (Kathryn Hahn) who agree to help her take back Christmas, Bad Moms-style. This leads to a hit and miss montage of the trio creating havoc at the mall, but the laughs outnumber the awkward moments, just barely.

Unfortunately for Kiki and Carla their own mothers have decided to visit. Kiki’s mom Sandy (Cheryl Hines) is a sweetheart, but she has severe boundary issues. A big gag has mom watching her daughter begin to have sex with her husband before revealing that she’s in the room. Carla’s mom, Isis (Susan Sarandon) meanwhile, doesn’t even realize it’s Christmas when she drops in. Isis needs some cash to fund her gambling habit and is seeking a loan from her only daughter.

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

TV Review The Lost Wife of Robert Durst

The Lost Wife of Robert Durst (2017) 

Directed by Yves Simoneaux

Written by Bettina Gilois, Matt Birkbeck

Starring Jesse Hutch, Katherine McPhee, Daniel Gillies

Release Date November 4th, 2017 

The Lifetime movie has become synonymous with low-budget, high-camp, gossipy trash. Though the network has worked to try and buy back some respectability with more ambitious, true-life stories and slightly bigger budgets, that gossipy, trashy style of storytelling remains the network’s bread and butter. I sound like I am complaining, and I probably should be, but the fact is, the gossipy, high-camp trash that is The Lost Wife of Robert Durst is insanely watchable; the definition of a pleasure to feel guilty about.

Katherine McPhee stars in The Lost Wife of Robert Durst as Kathie, the first wife of the scion of New York Real Estate moguls Robert Durst (Daniel Gillies – The Vampire Diaries and The Originals) of the New York City Dursts. Kathie met Robert, or Bobby, in 1971 when she took an apartment in a building Robert’s family owned and where he collected the monthly rent in person. The two literally bumped into each other in the hall and were soon inseparable.

What appealed to Kathie about Robert is anyone’s guess. Robert is twitchy, sweaty, and awkward in a way that isn’t charming. He has a square jaw, a full head of hair, and lots of money, but I won’t impugn the dead by saying the appeal was shallow. The film does nothing to make Robert Durst seem like a normal human being, so we really have no good answer to why someone as seemingly intelligent as Kathie is portrayed would be interested in such a weaselly dude.

The film cuts back and forth in time beginning with the fateful day in February of 1982 when an obviously distressed Durst reported his wife missing. We then cut back to Kathie moving into a nice apartment and getting settled before meeting Durst and seemingly hopping aboard the first available man; sorry to the memory of Kathie, but if the IRL Robert Durst is this off-putting, which, judging by The Jinx, he probably is, we have no Earthly idea what would cause Kathie to marry Robert.

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

Classic Movie Review Less Than Zero

Less Than Zero (1987) 

Directed by Marek Kanievska 

Written by Harley Peyton

Starring Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz, Robert Downey Jr. 

Release Date November 6th, 1987 

I am rather obsessed with the title Less than Zero. I can’t seem to figure out exactly what it signifies. I know that the title of the 1987 movie comes from the title of Elvis Costello’s debut single of the same title but neither the movie or the book by Bret Easton Ellis has anything to do with the song. The song isn’t even included in the movie or on its bestselling soundtrack record. Costello gives few contextual clues as to what he means when he says Less than Zero and thus the title remains mysterious and elusive. It exists in the realm of sounding ‘cool.’

Andrew McCarthy stars in Less than Zero as yet another of his young yuppie caricatures. Clay is a strait-laced Angelino who left the West Coast to get away from the meaninglessness of life in the pre-fab Cali suburbs. Clay is called back to Los Angeles, however, after his cheating girlfriend Blair (Jamie Gertz) leaves a frantic phone message for him regarding his best friend Julian (Robert Downey Jr.). Clay is wary of the call as Blair had cheated on him with Julian just weeks after he’d left for his Ivy League college.

Returning to Los Angeles, Clay is immediately thrust back into the fake stares and fake friendships of Los Angeles drug culture. This is a place where everyone is your friend and no one is your friend depending on your proximity to the drug of choice, Cocaine. Clay is liked by everyone, but everyone is aware that his leaving for the East Coast was a good idea as his lack of a crippling drug dependency keeps him at a distance from his West Coast brethren.

When Clay finds Julian, he quickly uncovers that Julian, whose father had given him thousands of dollars to break into the record producer biz, blew all of his dad’s cash on his cocaine habit. Julian’s dealer, Rip (James Spader at his snake-y best), has extended Julian credit to buy drugs but is now looking at ways to collect his debt that go beyond the money Julian no longer has. As Clay gets sucked into Julian’s downward spiral, he is able to resist the drugs but not his empathy for his childhood friend, a weakness that proves nearly as destructive as the drugs.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Thor Ragnorak

Thor Ragnorak (2017) 

Directed by Taika Waititi 

Written by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher L. Yost 

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban

Release Date November 3rd, 2017 

Thor: Ragnorak is a heck of a lot of fun. Director Taika Waititi is the first director to fully tap the potential of the Thor character and star Chris Hemsworth. Though we’re aware from The Avengers’ movies that Hemsworth is a real talent, he’s not had a solo, leading man effort that has lived up to the outings of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man or Chris Evans as Captain America. Even Tom Holland had schooled Hemsworth by making his Spiderman: Homecoming this past summer one of the best reviewed and well-loved movies in the Marvel canon.

Thor: Ragnorak picks up with our hero having still not returned to Asgard, nursing a fear that his presence may be what leads to Ragnorak, the Asgardian apocalypse. The visions that plagued Thor in Avengers: Age of Ultron have kept him moving about the universe in search what may be the source of his paranoid visions of the end of his world. The opening scene, however, has left him still unsatisfied but with only one alternative, finally returning to Asgard.

We already know what is waiting for Thor on Asgard as we recall Loki (Tom Hiddleston) had usurped his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), and taken on his likeness in order to rule Asgard. When Thor returns, Loki’s ruse is quickly uncovered and the search for Odin is on. What the brothers find however, is their father in the last moments of his life. Odin is dying and nothing can stop that. Worse yet, his death means the return of Hela (Cate Blanchett), The Goddess of Death.

Odin’s life force is all that has kept Hela at bay for centuries but without him she will return and Thor and Loki will not be able to stop her. There are a few major secrets that come to light with Hela but I won’t spoil them here, the secrets don’t matter all that much but they’re still secrets and this is intended as a spoiler-free review. Thor and Loki are quickly defeated in their first encounter with Hela leading them both to land on a strange scavenger planet where Loki charms the planet’s ruler, played by Jeff Goldblum, while Thor is turned into a gladiator and forced to battle an old friend who's been on the planet for some time and doesn’t immediately recognize his old friend.

Find my full lengh review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

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