Category: Review (D)

The opening shot of the opening scene of Rocky (1976) is of a painting of Jesus on the wall of the Church converted to a gymnasium, with Our Savior looking down on a match between a couple of third-rate fighters, Spider Rico and Rocky Balboa.  As writer, director, and now super-duper star, Sylvester Stallone explains it,  “The character of Rocky was built on the idea that he was chosen to do something.  That’s why the first image in Rocky is the picture of Christ.” As it is said in Proverbs:

The eyes of the LORD are in every place, Watching the evil and the good.

If the Lord is lucky, he will not have to see Creed II, an abomination of a movie bringing the Rocky series to its lowest point since Tommy Gunn.   The movie is at once predictable and incoherent, one that sets up some foundational existential questions, and then inexplicably pretends like it didn’t.  Have you ever had a friend ask you a serious question and then talk over you while you are trying to answer it?  That’s pretty much how the tail end of this movie goes.

Okay, so that is probably a little harsher than it needs to be.  And I am sure my allergic reaction at least partly stems from high expectations for the rebirth of the series.  I am a reasonably big fan of the Rocky movies, particularly the original, Rocky III,  Rocky IV (a guilty pleasure), and L&D really liked last year’s Creed, as a flawed but entertaining movie that had a lot of heart.

While Creed II has some heart, what it has a lot more of is the plot lines lifted directly from Rocky III and Rocky IV.  The movie opens with the title character ascending to the  heavyweight championship juxtaposed with the spawn of Ivan Drago beating down challengers in the dingy gyms Moscow has to offer.   The elder Drago is in his son’s corner, and we see an (obviously) American fight promoter gym rat keeping tabs on both sides of the world.

This is essentially the set-up of Rocky III, comfortable champ, hungry challenger. Instead of Mr. T, however, we get the Son of Drago, who lacks the charisma and intrigue of his father, so the film just decides to focus on the elder Drago (Dolph Lundgren).   You may recall from Rocky IV that it was Ivan Drago who killed Apollo Creed in the ring back in the 1980s.  Rocky, of course, “avenged” this tragedy by not only defeating Drago on his home turf in the Soviet Union, but also by winning the heart and minds of the Soviet crowd in spectacular and ridiculous fashion.

Fast forward to Creed II and we learn that the elder Drago has yet to live down the loss. His moneyed countrymen spurn him, and his charismatic wife (Brigitte Nielson) walked away from both Ivan and their son, Viktor.   As Jung famously observed, “the greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents,” and, indeed, it is up to Viktor to make amends for the shortcomings of his father.   Together with the American fight promoter, the Dragos visit Philadelphia to goad the new champion into a match.  That the young Adonis Creed feels  compelled to fight under his late father’s flag puts the basic geopolitical tensions of Rocky IV into play, along with Drago-Balboa, Drago-Creed, Drago-ex-Mrs. Drago, Creed-papa Creed, Creed-mama Creed, Creed-Bianca, Donny-Biancas-baby Creed, to name a few.

Although there is way too much going on and I have many issues with what the movie actually attempts to resolve, I will just mention that my primary objection has to do with the treatment of fighter safety, particularly the question of a corner’s decision to stop a fight.  Because it is bad form for a fighter to “quit” it is often incumbent on the referee or the corner to step in and save the fighter from himself.   Firstly, it is the referee’s responsibility to stop a fight when the fighter is unable to defend himself anymore.  Absent an official stoppage, the fighter’s corner can “throw in the towel” when it believes its fighter has had enough punishment.

This, of course, is a paramount issue because presumably Apollo Creed might have made it out of the ring so many years ago if Rocky or Apollo’s long-time trainer Duke Evers had thrown in the towel on his behalf.  Indeed, we learn that Rocky feels the pain two-fold because he was the champ who should have been fighting Drago, and he also was in the corner that didn’t protect Apollo.  Apollo’s widow (Felicia Rashad) also feels the pain of loss, spending her life amidst Apollo’s fortune and glory, but without the man who made it all possible.  And then, of course, there is young Adonis himself,  feeling the pain of being deprived of a father at the same time that he is about to become a father.

That actually doesn’t sound too bad of a plot, does it?  If they had to go back in time, would they have stopped the fight when their fighter was in danger?

The movie wrestles with this in a perfunctory fashion, but it ultimately throws in the towel when it matters most.  For me, this was both disappointing and stupefying, and, beginning with the tire in the ring during training, I just don’t understand why Stallone let the script follow that path.  If the rifle is hanging on the wall in the opening act, it had better go off by the end of the film — if it doesn’t get fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there!  Is this really what young Adonis Creed was chosen to do?

On the plus side, there are actually a lot of things on the plus side.  Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky continues to be a great and emergent character, and Stallone himself continues to be a modern marvel of HGH.  I half expected him to get in the ring and spar a few rounds himself.  Even better, we have Michael B. Jordan being his great self, though his greatness is limited by the more cartoonish motivations given to him by the script.  He continues on his relationship with Bianca (Tessa Thompson), and her character and her music are both taken seriously.  The principal focus on Adonis and his family continues the rightful transition toward emphasizing African-American characters, as it is, of course, African Americans who continue to dominate the U.S. boxing scene.  Indeed, Jordan and Stallone have a great exchange on this point over baby names.

We also get to see Dolph Lundgren again, and he really has this strong, silent type thing nailed.  He isn’t given much to work with, but he is entirely believable.  I will also say I was pleased that the Brigitte Nielson character is satisfyingly predictable, and she manages to light up the movie without having to say a word.  With those two taking center stage, the young Drago — you know, that big muscly guy that almost gets run over by a Hummer a couple of times — isn’t given anything to work with.  Who is the villain here, anyway?

So while the plot is just too much tried and not enough true, there is probably enough to like here to rally this one above the $6 bar.  It has played to mostly positive reviews and we are undoubtedly headed to Creed III, so if you have seen the first seven in the series, there is probably enough here to warrant seeing the eighth.  The Achilles heel is not that the movie didn’t entertain, but that it could have rivaled the “original” with a bit more imagination and work on the script side.

Next time, I’ll manage my expectations better.  And I hope the Creed III folks will either fire that rifle or keep it out of sight.

Hunter Killer is nostalgic.   It’s nostalgic for some of the great submarine drama films like Das Boot and Hunt for Red October and Grey Lady Down (one of the first movies I can remember seeing in the theater; it gave me nightmares).   It’s nostalgic for a time when men were men and were at one with their careers.   And, it’s nostalgic for the time when people thought Hillary Clinton would win the presidency.   That’s a lot of nostalgia for just $5!

The movie stars Gerard Butler (no relation) as Joe Glass, a tough-as-nails, salt-of-the-earth, macho man first-time submarine captain — but not so heartless that he would put an arrow through a mama caribou out for a walk with all her little cariboos.  Joe takes the helm of a submarine en route to the icy waters of eastern Russia (or was it western Russia?), where he is to investigate the mysterious disappearance of another American submarine.   He explains to the crew that he is one of them, a career man, worked his way up from swabbing the deck and cleaning tubes and that he has saltwater in his veins.  This is a central point of the movie.

Glass’ counterpart on the Russian sub is also a career man who has dedicated his life to his underwater duties. This is clearly explained to us at least one point in the film, possibly four.  The Russian commander is decidedly shorter than Glass.

Meanwhile, back on terra firma, we have a team of rugged Navy SEAL-like characters, led by Toby Stevens, kicking ass and kicking more ass.  They are going to get  dropped into the s-h-you know what and things are going to get hot.  There is some great commando action for sure.  Stevens, it turns out, has also dedicated his life to the cause.

Back in Washington, we have Gary Oldham, who inexplicably shares top billing with Butler here.  This is not inexplicable because Oldham doesn’t have Butler’s acting chops; it is inexplicable because his character is so poorly written.  Oldham spends most of his time on screen pretty mad, possibly because he got cast in such a lousy role.  If you told me he was playing the role because he got drunk and lost a bet with Gerard Butler, that would make more sense than whatever actually happened to get him to waste his talent here.

Oldham is joined by, among others, Jayne Norquist (Linda Cardellini) in the military intelligence corner of the film.  Although Norquist is not in uniform, she does have a higher level of security clearance than her uniformed counterparts in the room.  But despite her elevated egghead standing, she has not dedicated her life to the cause, arriving at the crisis center war room straight from one of her kid’s school events.  The movie does not give you the sense that double duty as a mother is a mark in her favor.

Finally, in the fourth corner of the movie, we have some action taking place just off the icy waters of western Russia (or was it eastern Russia?) involving the Russian President (Alexander Diachenko) and assorted military personnel.   This is pretty interesting and not terribly generous to the Russians, perhaps explaining why the film distributor is having trouble releasing it in Russia and the Ukraine.   That’s probably a pretty interesting story in and of itself.  Google it and let me know.

Despite my objections to some of the cliches, the wooden story lines, and the pervasiveness of retrograde mentality, the story is compelling and the throwback action is generally fantastic.   If you long for a movie with some great scenery and lots of military tech on display, I’m guessing you will find a lot to like here.

As for the thematic elements, there is a guest appearance by a would-be Hillary Clinton-type presidential character (Caroline Gooodall), suggesting that production started prior to the 2016 election!  I suppose there is something interesting to be said about a movie that longs for days when men’s identities were at one with their careers would tacitly imagine a Clinton victory in 2016.   I’m just not sure what that is.

Overall, above the $5 bar for a fun story, good action in many “theaters,” a couple of compelling characters, and pretty awesome visuals along the way.  It won’t join the canon of awesome submarine thrillers, but the location scouting was magnificent, and this one should be enjoyed on a very large screen somewhere.

The key to enjoying a movie like Bohemian Rhapsody is managing expectations.   Months out, L didn’t seem terribly excited about the prospects of attending opening night, so we agreed we were probably not going to be breaking out the *Instant Classic* tag for this one.  But we had a good attitude and low expectations when we parked ourselves in the front middle seats and let ourselves recline into the sounds of one of some of the greatest pop / rock hits that ever graced AM radio.

L was right to be afraid:  the movie was not good.   I would describe it as a big budget Lifetime Movie Network production shot amidst a writers’ strike.   The back stories are weak. The main story lines are generally trite.  The emotional payoffs are minimal.  This sad state of affairs should be expected given the tumultuous nature of the film’s development, and I’m guessing the politics of this movie’s development were more interesting than what the movie reveals about the history of the band.

Even so, there are a number of big pluses.  Firstly, Rami Malek and his prosthetic teeth make for a convincing Freddy Mercury.  Second and thirdly, what they didn’t spend on writing they seem to have saved for wardrobe and production values.  And, finally, Mike Myers is barely recognizable and mostly fun as the red-headed curmudgeon.  Adding that all up, L&D left in a reasonably upbeat mood.  If you like Queen’s big hits, it isn’t a complete waste of time.

One note of caution, however, the more I read about the development of this film vis a vis the fact vs. fiction angle, the worse it gets.   So I quit reading.  But, suffice it to say, if you are a stickler for Queen history, it’s probably best to stay away from this one.

So, while we are happy we saw it, I don’t think we’re quite generous enough to brandish the *Not Terrible* tag, either.   I’m guessing that when this one hits TBS I will fire up the Greatest Hits album instead and give “Under Pressure” its due.

“Box Office Don’t Lie” is a favorite aphorism of my favorite movie review partner, and our feature this week appears to be a case where the 35 rating on Metacritic is perpendicular to the audience reaction.  Indeed, Marvel’s newest offering, Venom was the dominant offering over at the Marcus Cineplex the night we attended, and yet we sat in amidst a packed house to see last Tuesday night’s late screening.  To the extent that east central Wisconsin has its finger on the pulse of the box office, this one is headed to blockbuster status.

To those non-aficionados of the comic-book genre, Venom is an alien life form that instigates a symbiosis with a human carrier to elicit truly terrifying results.  That human is typically Peter Parker’s nemesis at The Daily Bugle, Eddie Brock, and we last saw the character in Spiderman 3, played by Topher Grace (and Parker himself also got venomized for a spell in that movie).  Spiderman 3 was a disaster of a movie that brought that particular story arc to a screeching halt (there there have been two more major studio arcs since, for those of you keeping score).  And, in the spirit of if at first you don’t succeed….

In this Venom incarnation, we don’t get any mention of Spidey, but we do get Eddie Brock, living in San Francisco having been chased out of Gotham some eastern city.  Brock finds himself as the investigative vlogger for the San Francisco paper / media concern, while living with his gorgeous lawyer girlfriend, Anne (Michelle Williams).  And it is Brock, played by Tom Hardy, that is pretty much the sole focus of the film — not as Hardy-centric as, say, Locke, but I would bet Hardy takes up over half of the screen time.  In contrast to the typical portrayal of Brock as a sniveling little weasel, Hardy plays it up more as a somewhat misguided urban hipster, lovable, but prone to bad judgement.  And once Brock and Venom become one, his back and forth with the alien symbiote push this one well over the $5 bar, even without the popcorn.  Indeed, I would argue that Hardy’s brilliant acting definitely undermines the credibility of the consensus panning of this one.

In fairness to the critics, there is plenty to complain about here.  First and foremost, the villain is weak.  If there is no Spidey to stop Venom, what exactly is going on in this movie?  And that is pretty much the rub.  The film trots out Riz Ahmed as the mad scientist, sort of an Elon Musk type who we also see loosely in Tony Stark and Norman Osborn and Lex Luthor, among others — the Big Brain, megalomaniac, world-conquerer type. Above the law and making his play to improve on the human condition.

Well, as we have remarked before, the villain / foil is really a key to a good action movie (e.g., Hans Gruber, the Joker, the Wicked Witch, Sam Gerard), and this movie doesn’t have it.  The best that can be said about the Ahmed character is his house on the banks of the Pacific just over the Golden Gate bridge is pretty cool, even if it does look remarkably like Tony Stark’s house further on down the coast in SoCal.  So, score one for the critical consensus on this front.

I suppose you could argue that Venom is Brock’s foil, and this relationship worked pretty well.  Kudos for that.  The audience repeatedly erupted in laughter from the alien commentary.   And, on that score, give it up for Tom Hardy.   His comedic, Men-in-Blackish portrayal of the alien’s host is good theater.  And, Hardy has now played two of the greatest comic book villains that DC and Marvel have offered up, Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and now Venom in Venom.   It is too bad the idiotic story lines in both of these efforts failed to keep pace with his considerable talents.

With all that said, it is no big surprise that this is one that audiences love and critics hate.  For this coming Tuesday’s showings, our local Marcus Theater is presenting 15 Venom showtimes, compared to 16 combined for Bad Times at the El Royale and First Man.  Box Office don’t lie, indeed.   I guess when you are sizing this one up you have to ask yourself:  if you had been newly endowed with superpowers, would you take a leap off a tall building, or would you take the elevator down?   L&D recommend that you take the leap on this one.

L&D haven’t been this amped for a movie release since the disappointing Sully, so it was with a wary eye that we cruised past the extended line at the Taco Bell drive through to see Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga do their thing in the new A Star is Born incarnation.

Surprisingly, it was not a festival crowd, with the theater virtually empty.  Perhaps the special Wednesday showing soaked up some of the advance crowd?   At any rate, to the extent that opening night is the pulse of the wider movie audience, this one does not seem to be destined for blockbuster status.

The movie has some really great parts to it — Cooper and Lady Gaga are really spectacular in the lead roles, some of the music is pretty good (some isn’t), and Sam Elliot continues to have a really low voice.  We also get Andrew Dice Clay as a would-be crooner degenerate gambler (and there are no quotation marks around “Dice” in the credits) and Dave Chappelle appearing as a Friend-of-Bradley.  Talk about star power.

Another big plus is that the film takes the time to let the characters and story develop something beyond a Hollywood romance, with some scenes daring to linger on well past the usual Hollywood time allotment — I was almost surprised, for instance, that Cooper didn’t pull out his frequent shopper card when he was purchasing frozen peas at the Super A.  I also felt that it is one of the best meditations on alcoholism, for one, and wealth and power dynamics, for two, that I can remember in a mainstream film.  Indeed, the alcoholism is portrayed as if Cooper knows from whence he speaks, and parts of the film are so uncomfortable that they are virtually unwatchable.

On the other hand, I really didn’t buy the plot after the turn.  That is, I found her rise far more convincing and emotionally satisfying than the fall, which made for kind of a weird ride for me.  When Lady Gaga hits the stage for the first time, you’d have to be made of stone not to shed some tears when she becomes overwrought and covers her face with her hands.  But the latter parts didn’t ring as true for me, and I was actually getting  kind of irritated by the end.  In some sense the story just didn’t piece together as well as I would have liked.  And as we reached the three-hour mark (or maybe it just seemed like it), some of it seemed rushed, slapped together, incongruent, perhaps making up for the time lost with the more extended meditations earlier in the movie.  In my mind, the last hour knocked it down from great to good status.

L correctly points out that if you like Bradly Cooper or Lady Gaga, you will love this movie.  Possibly true.  The guitar and bass line of “Black Eyes” is still rumbling through me 12 hours later.  There is certainly plenty to like.   But, you will have to wait for L to get here to hand out the awards for “Best New Director” and “Best Movie” for this one.

As I finish this up, one thing that I realize that I overlooked is the movie’s thesis about what it means to be a superstar in the modern world.   The Cooper character always maintained that what differentiated him was that he was true to himself, making his life an open book — that’s why he didn’t mind when the cashier brazenly snapped his picture; she knows exactly what he’s all about because he laid it all out there for her and everyone else.  Cooper’s thesis seems almost ridiculous amidst orchestral-accompaniment in Lady Gaga’s closing tune.  Did they write that with the violin in mind?  Maybe that’s what all that late splicing was about?  That was certainly not what she was all about before she met him.

The verdict:  L&D were both more impressed than not.  You will probably be thinking about this one long after the curtain closes. So give it a chance.  You’ll probably love it.

L&D were a blank slate settling into the new Mark Wahlberg vehicle, Mile 22, not realizing that the movie has been (appropriately) panned by many of our critic brethren.  Wahlberg sort of reprises his misanthropic, fast-talking Sergeant Dignam role from The Departed.  Only here he plays the on-the-ground savant leader of a special ops team of last resort, called on when diplomatic and militaristic solutions fail.   And, it’s pretty cool to see the moving technological parts of these ops, reminiscent of Enemy of the State from so many years ago.  This movie is not nearly as good, unfortunately, though I would guess that those responsible thought  it would be a home run worthy of at least one sequel. I guess we’ll see.

The plot centers on Wahlberg, Lauren Cohan and former UFC phenom Ronda Rousey (among others) tasked with transporting Iko Uwais to an airstrip 20-some miles away as a quid pro quo to stave off a large helping of cesium-enhanced terrorism.  If you don’t know about the horrors of cesium, Wahlberg will enlighten you along the way; he’s pretty knowledgeable.  By my estimate, this trek absorbs the last two-thirds of the movie and is effectively an extended action sequence through the streets of somewhere in Columbia or Georgia, I guess (though the plot was ostensibly set in Indonesia).

The movie does possess a couple of strengths.  The technology stuff is mostly well done and cool to look at and sort of overwhelming to keep track of, sort of like surveillance-state technology, I suppose.  As for the players, Wahlberg is a compelling character with his verbal rat-a-tat-tats and band-snapping intensity. Rousey is also pretty good and well cast.  But the action hero here is the asset, Iko Uwais, who is like a supercharged kung fu god, just beating the living hell out of everyone who gets in his way.  Even being handcuffed to a table can’t slow him down.  He is unbelievable.  He steals the show.   He wins the movie.

There are a couple of downers, as well.  The story line with Cohan is ridiculous, irritating filler, though she does have one great sequence where she is on the losing end of some WWF-type action from a much larger foe.   And John Malkovich shows up with a pretty cool new haircut, but otherwise it is pretty disappointing to see his talent wasted like this.

As for the action, there is certainly a lot to choose from.  Unfortunately, it’s often disorienting with those multi-camera blur sequences, and occasionally hyper violent (causing L&D to cringe laugh so loudly at one point that the small smattering of our movie-going brethren turned to see who was laughing at a man falling on his head in such a way that his neck and shoulder are perfectly parallel, ouch). It is violent even by today’s standards, though not too much in the way of gross-out gore. This is a movie not afraid to shoot you in the face.  L points out that this is another one of those first-person shooter movies, a la John Wick or, the gold standard, Hardcore Henry .  For our New Year’s Resolution, we will revisit the latter and provide a review.   What a breath of bloody phlegm that movie was.

But back to Mile 22 — the movie seemed longer than it was, and as it ended I credibly thought it might have another half hour.  My guess is that Wahlberg and the other producers thought going in that it had another hour and a half in the form of a sequel.   I have my doubts.  A better use of Wahlberg’s time might be an exploration of what that Sgt Dingham character is up to all these years later.  Or Ted 3.

So maybe at the $5 bar for this one.   Fortunately, I’ve been racking up these Fandango VIP points that effectively give me $3 for every movie I see, so we were in and out of this one, popcorn included, for just $2.   So let’s just say it soared over the $2 bar with the added bonus that we didn’t have to sit through an extra hour after the popcorn was gone.