Movie Review Coco

Coco (2017)  

Directed by Lee Unkrich 

Written by Adrian Molina, Matthew Aldrich 

Starring Anthony Gonzalez, Gael Garcia Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach 

Release Date November 22nd, 2017 

It’s hard for me to look at a Pixar movie as just another movie. The computer animation company has built such a remarkable run of quality work that it feels like something more than just a string of hit cartoons. Pixar movies combine heart, humor, pathos and great art unlike any other company on the planet. Toy Story, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and the like aren’t just any other kids movie, they are highly regarded works of art.

So it pains me to report that Pixar’s latest effort Coco is just another animated movie. Don’t misunderstand, it’s better than your average animated movie and certainly aspires toward the works of art that came before it in the Pixar canon, it just comes up a little short of the Pixar standard. With a pat story and flat characters, Coco has some lovely moments but never soars the way Pixar classics have soared before. Yes, I’m complaining because Coco is great but not brilliant.

Coco stars the voice of Anthony Gonzalez as Miguel, the curious son of a family that has banned music from their hearts and homes for decades. Too bad for Miguel then that he was born with an undying song in his heart. When he isn’t shining shoes for his family shoe business, Miguel is dreaming in music and longing for the moment he can take up a guitar and play for an excited audience. His chance arrives during a celebration of the Dia De los Muertes, the Day of the Dead, a legendary celebration when it is believed the spirits of the dead can, for one night, return to the world of the living.

A competition is to be held for musicians in the town square and all Miguel needs is a guitar so that he may jump on stage and celebrate his love of music. Unfortunately, before he can head for the square, his secret is uncovered by his imperious grandmother who winds up destroying his guitar. It seems that the family has been banned from listening to or playing music since Miguel’s great-great grandfather left behind his wife and daughter, Miguel's great grandmother, Coco, to play music in nightclubs.

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

Movie Review The Square

The Square (2017) 

Directed by Ruben Ostlund

Written by Ruben Ostlund 

Starring Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, Dominic West, Terry Notary

Release Date November 23rd, 2017 

The Square, the 2017 winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s highest honor, the Palme D’or, is a provocative and strange film. At times, the film defies description in its oddity and yet its points and purposes regarding political correctness as an excuse for the rich to ignore the poor are relatively obvious and on the nose. Directed by Ruben Ostlund, whose Force Majeure was far more interestingly provocative than The Square, the film has beautiful cinematography and a handful of the most interesting scenes in any movie in 2017.

Christian (Claes Bang) is the curator of a famed museum in Stockholm that specializes in Avant Garde performance art. The museum has recently received a very, very generous donation all the while the streets of Stockholm are teeming with the homeless and the helpless. Surely this type of money could be used for something better than a museum where the lead attraction appears to be an installation of piles of orderly gravel.

The new exhibit that this donation will help fund is another Avant Garde piece titled The Square. The Square is a lighted geometric square located in front of the museum. It is accompanied by a plaque indicating that "The Square" is a place of understanding and equality, to paraphrase the high-end pretension. Christian now must find a way to market the installation and the museum board has turned to a pair of millennial artists who have a unique viral campaign in mind.

That would be enough of a plot and metaphor for some movies but it’s not enough for Ostlund, who prefers to tell his story by putting the handsome and successful Christian through the ringer. When we meet Christian, he is walking to work when a young woman comes screaming out of the distance. The woman claims a man is chasing her and threatening her life. However, when Christian and another man stop to defend the poor, frightened woman, Christian winds up getting pickpocketed, and his seeming good deed proves to be the first of many indignities to befall our hero.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal

Movie Review Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017) 

Directed by Paul McGuigan

Written by Matt Greenhalgh

Starring Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Walters, Stephen Graham

Release Date November 16th, 2017

I fell in love with Gloria Grahame, as so many movie fans did, in her pitch perfect performance in In a Lonely Place, one of my all-time favorite films. Grahame plays one of those self-possessed, take-no-crap dames that always seemed to play opposite Bogart. He loved strong women, breaking down their defenses was what made him a screen icon, and them the envy of women everywhere. Grahame stood out, however, as she allowed herself just a little more vulnerability than the others, a note of extra sadness to go with the sass.

Gloria Grahame was rushed out of Hollywood before we truly got to know her. Her crime? Growing older and refusing to play along with Hollywood executives eager to capitalize on her beauty without respecting her talent. Screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce recalled in a piece he wrote about the movie Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, how Grahame lost the iconic role of a gangster’s moll turned lady in Born Yesterday when she refused to ride alone in a limo with producer Howard Hughes. That’s Gloria Grahame in a nutshell, beautiful and uncompromising.

Annette Bening stars as Gloria Grahame in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool and she nails the beautiful and uncompromising parts of Gloria Grahame while also exploring that vulnerability and sadness that marked the Grahame I remember from In a Lonely Place. Jamie Bell co-stars in the film as Peter Turner, an aspiring Liverpool stage actor who lived in the same rundown tenement building as Grahame while she starred in one of the few stage productions in the world that would have her.

The two met and forged a relationship that might seem icky from the outside, a May-December romance that one might assume was about an older woman’s desire and a young man’s egotistical notion of ladder climbing. That’s not this story. That’s not this couple. In the hands of director Paul McGuigan and writer Matt Greenhalgh, there appears to be little age difference at all, but rather a meeting of twin spirits, genuinely excited to find one another.

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

Movie Review Roman J. Israel Esq

Roman J. Israel Esq. (2017) 

Directed by Dan Gilroy 

Written by Dan Gilroy 

Starring Denzel Washington, Carmen Ejogo, Colin Farrell 

Release Date November 17th, 2017 

There is just something off about Roman J. Israel Esq. The pieces are all there for a good movie but something intangible is lacking. That is strange considering we are talking about a Denzel Washington movie that is part character piece and part legal thriller. These commercial and artistic elements should work well together, especially considering that Denzel Washington is one of our finest actors, but it just doesn’t come together as I am assuming it was intended.

Roman J. Israel Esq. is a lawyer in Los Angeles who doesn’t try cases. Roman has worked with his friend Carter Johnson (Amari Cheatom) for decades, having come up together as both students and civil rights activists. Their dynamic seemed perfectly suited to Roman; he was the man behind the scenes, the savant who has memorized the legal code, and Carter was the charismatic attorney better able to articulate the law in front of a judge and jury.

Together, Roman and Jackson defended the small timers, the people being rushed through a corrupt system intended to fill privatized prisons by corrupt prosecutors burnishing their win loss records for future private practice opportunities. Roman would be too disgusted and incapable to manage among such people. So, naturally, that is where the story of the movie, written and directed by Dan Gilroy, intends to send poor Roman: into the system he loathes.

When Carter has a heart attack, Roman finds himself first having to go to court, something he is ill-suited for. Then, when the practice is set to be shuttered by Carter’s family following his death, Roman is further unmoored, forced to accept a job with one of Carter’s disciples, George Pierce (Colin Ferrell), a former idealist turned high-end defense attorney as concerned with marketing and bottom lines as he is with the guilt or innocence of his clients.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) 

Directed by Wes Ball 

Written by Josh Friedman 

Starring Owen Teague, Freya Allen, Kevin Durand, William H. Macy, Peter Macon 

Release Date May 10th, 2024 

Published May 10th, 2024

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a remarkable adventure. Smart, extraordinarily accomplished, and very entertaining. Directed by Wes Ball, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a layered and thorough adventure which uses the story of the Apes to reflect our modern culture. It's a statement movie that is easy to miss if you prefer just looking at Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes as an action adventure and special effects extravaganza. The statement is a full-throated rebuke of fascism and the notion that any one person or ape should be allowed to become a dictator. 

It's also about how being a dictator can blind you to the truth. The character of Proximus Caesar has all of the tools to know that his desperate clinging to power and the piety with which he approaches his vision of ape superiority is going to be his downfall. Yes, you could argue that this merely mirrors the approach of Dr. Zaius in the original Planet of the Apes but this would require you to ignore the world we live in right now where we have a burgeoning movement of people who wouldn't mind installing a dictator who will rule with an iron fist, punish their enemies, and reward those who choose to be loyal to them. 

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes stars Owen Teague as Noa, a young ape looking to prove himself to his father, one of the elders and leaders of the Eagle Clan. Noa's clan is known for keeping Eagles who will hunt and gather fish to bring back to the clan. A rite of passage in the clan is for those coming of age to travel into the wild and find an Eagle egg to bring back to the clan. The egg will then be taken care of until hatched and then the Eagle is raised by that young person to be their Eagle. The opening action of the movie is a terrific set piece in which Noa and his closest friends, Soona (Linda Peckham) and Anaya (Travis Jeffery). It's a terrific sequence that establishes Noa as brave, resourceful and headstrong. 

The plot kicks in when members of a clan directed by Proximus (Kevin Durand) attack Noa's clan. Many apes are killed while most of the clan is captured and brought back to the Kingdom of Proximus to act as slaves aiding Proximus in retrieving a treasure trove of items that once belonged to man. In a twist on the original convention of the 1968 original Planet of the Apes, Proximus is aware of how Apes and man once lived together. He's aware of the plague that nearly wiped-out humanity, leaving the survivors mute. Most importantly, via his relationship with a human being who can speak, played by William H. Macy, Proximus knows that there are weapons in the vault he's found, and he wants them. 

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

Movie Review Lady Bird

Lady Bird (2017) 

Directed by Greta Gerwig 

Written by Greta Gerwig 

Starring Saorise Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Timothee Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Lucas Hedges, Tracy Letts

Release Date November 3rd, 2017 

Lady Bird is a remarkably emotional experience, even if you’re not a teenage girl from Sacramento. Writer-director Greta Gerwig has, in her first directorial effort, relayed a masterpiece of the coming-of-age genre. Lady Bird is a wonderfully human, sympathetic, and smart movie, more in touch with real human emotion than most films of its kind. The film ranks next to my other favorite movie of 2017, The Big Sick, as that all too rare humane masterpiece.

Lady Bird, real name Christine, though she does loathe to be called that, Lady Bird is the name she chose for herself, is an iconoclast. At 17 years old, she has a strong sense of what she wants but not what to do with that information. What she wants is what so many 17-year-old girls wants, to be away from her mother. Don’t misunderstand; there is nothing particularly wrong with Lady Bird’s mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf), she just tries to make Lady Bird more realistic, and Lady Bird can’t have that.

Marion isn’t a perfect mother. She does criticize too much and is pushy in the way many moms are. She’s also recently the only significant income in her family of five, including her recently unemployed husband Larry (Tracy Letts), their son Miguel (Jordan Rodriguez), and Miguel’s live-in girlfriend Shelly (Marielle Scott). And, of course, Lady Bird who seems to have no concept of the limitations her family lives within, locked within her bubble of teenage self-involvement.

Boys have become a new focus of Lady Bird’s attention. Attending a Catholic all-girl school, she was rather sheltered until she found out about the school’s partnership with a nearby boy’s school to perform musicals. With her best friend Julia (the wonderful Beanie Feldstein), Lady Bird pursues acting, if only to indulge her theatrical nature and meets Danny (Lucas Hedges), a stand-out actor, up for the lead part. The teenage romance between Lady Bird and Danny is one of the most perfect presentations of first love that I have ever seen on screen, and I have seen a few teen romances in my time.

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

Movie Review Thelma

Thelma (2017) 

Directed by Joachim Trier 

Written by Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier 

Starring Elli Harboe, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Kaya Wilkins 

Release Date November 22nd, 2017 

Thelma is a fascinating and immersive supernatural drama that never fails to surprise. Director Joachim Trier, on his third feature following the remarkable duo of Reprise and Louder than Bombs, has crafted the most unlikely and unusual coming of age story that I have ever seen. Bristling with the awkward tension of newly discovered sexuality and a dangerous supernatural awakening, Thelma is among the most refreshing takes on the coming-of-age tale you could possibly imagine.

Thelma (Elli Harboe) is a sheltered teenager who has left home for the first time to attend college. Thelma’s over-protective parents, Trond (Henrik Rafaelson) and Unni (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), hover over every aspect of her life, calling nightly to ask about everything from classes to what she’s having for dinner. For the first few weeks of class Thelma is so tied to her phone by her parents’ calls that she fails to get out and learn to make friends.

Thankfully, that begins to change when Thelma meets Anya (Kaya Wilkins). Anya was in the college library when poor Thelma had what appeared to be an epileptic seizure. Anya cradled her head until the seizure passed, and paramedics arrived. Later, Thelma and Anya meet again at the school pool, and they make plans to hang out. Sheltered Thelma is excited to have made her first friend, so excited that she fails to see that Anya is thinking of her as potentially more than a friend.

As Thelma awakens to Anya’s feelings and begins to process her own feelings that she can hardly begin to understand from her cloistered religious upbringing, the film begins to take a dark turn. Thelma’s epileptic seizures, unbeknownst to her, have begun to affect the outside world, as if she were sending powerful psychic waves into the universe. As she seeks treatment for her seizures, Thelma begins to recover memories of her powers having a similar kinetic power when she was a child. This revelation leads to a shocking reveal.

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