Category: Review (D)

L&D headed out for The Shape of Water Thursday night and boy are we glad that we did.   It’s Beauty and the Beast for the Cold War set, only with a lot more egg imagery and masturbation.    The protagonist is a solitaire, semi-beautiful mute woman, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), who lives in an apartment above the movie theater next to her neighbor (Richard Jenkins), an erstwhile commercial artist, closeted lonely guy, cat lover.  They watch a lot of movies and spend their time being lonely together.  Elisa takes the bus to her work at a top-secret government site, where she works on the cleaning staff alongside Zelda (Octavia Spencer),  who provides a running stream-of-consciousness one-way dialog throughout the day.  The site is supervised by Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), a candy-chomping shitheel who was responsible for transporting an amphibious creature up to Baltimore, and is now in charge of securing the creature for whatever it is the US military and/or its Soviet rivals are going to do with it.

That’s the basic setup, but the movie really isn’t about the story, it’s about a lot of other things.  It’s shot beautifully, with a really cool color scheme.   The acting is brilliant — it’s hard to imagine Hawkins, Spencer, Jenkins or Shannon being better cast or providing better performances.   It has some great writing and some memorable lines (“There is no profit in last week’s fish”).  It is laugh-out-loud funny in spots.   It is uncomfortable and disturbing in others.  It has scenes so excruciatingly painful that I had to cover my eyes, and scenes so beautiful that I forgot how ridiculous the whole thing was.  It reminds me of The Purple Rose of Cairo with its running homage to the great movies, and a main character who can’t help but find herself lost in them.

So, this should be on our top movies list for the year, but that ship has sailed.  I’m pretty sure it’s not for everybody, but for us it was over the $6 bar for sure.   I might even see if the misses wants to check it out.  I’m better looking than the leading man for a change.

The people responsible for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri made some great choices, but they did not make a great film.  The plot centers around the aftermath of a rape and murder of a young woman in Ebbing, whose mother, Mildred, (Frances McDormand) puts up billboards calling out Police Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) to make some headway in the case.  Chief Willoughby says he doesn’t have much to go on, and it’s no wonder: his right-hand man is a dipshit racist (Jason Dixon played mostly brilliantly by Sam Rockwell), and the rest of the gang is a bunch of brazenly white guys that don’t seem to be doing too much in the way of police work.  On top of that, Willoughby has his own problems. Indeed, everyone in this movie is damaged goods in one way or another, and the film does a really good job of conveying the complicated emotions for all involved.

Despite these emotions, the story is told with this sort of a screwball comedy vibe, and this tension in the production never gets resolved.  On the way out of the theater, L wondered aloud how he didn’t like the movie even though it was a good movie.  I think the answer is that the film makers didn’t want to go  completely Altman and let it be built on character pieces, and they didn’t have the stomach to cut the good material they were working with in order to tighten it up to make it a great drama. The former is tough to do (and probably tough to sell in Hollywood), and the latter would have required cutting out some great acting and dialog.  So what we are left with is something that is sort of a mush of some of the best and the worst of the likes of Twin Peaks, Fargo and Mystic River.  This will go down as a movie where people remember some great scenes and amusing dialog, but will scratch their heads at some of the plot holes and other peculiarities.

The positives include the cast and characters, and the casting is brilliant top to bottom:  Red (Caleb Landry Jones) is the semi-principled ad exec, Robbie (Lucas Hedges) is Mildred’s son who has to deal with the blowback from his mother’s antics, and Charlie (John Hawkes) is Mildred’s ex-husband, a wife beater now living with the unreasonably good looking “19-year old” Penelope (Samara Weaving).  On the negative side, Penelope is caricatured as a ditz, though she works as an animal trainer and reads about horses in her spare time.  Even more unfortunately, although the movie takes some stabs at race issues, the several African American characters are not developed at all.  Even Chief Abercrombie (Clarke Peters), who is eventually sent in (by whom?) to replace Willoughby, is just a place holder, not a character.  There is possibly a metaphor I am missing here.

Another positive is that there are some lucid scenes, including a a “date” between Mildred and the alcoholic used car salesman and midget, Peter Dinklage. The meal takes place for what passes for an upscale restaurant in Ebbing, and the ex-husband arrives with his young girlfriend about midway through.  This allows Dinklage to rattle off a brief monologue that lays bare life’s prospects for the likes of these folks, and there is probably a thesis of the movie in there somewhere.  We all play the hand we were dealt.  Other scenes, particularly the one where Mildred dresses down the Catholic priest, aim high and miss the mark.

Finally, at the risk of introducing spoilers, during the end of the film I was reminded of one of the great and mysterious lines of the 1993 movie, Tombstone, where the Val Kilmer Doc Holliday character says of Wyatt Earp:

“Oh, make no mistake, it’s not revenge he’s after; it’s a reckoning.”

A reckoning is a resolution and an ending, but that is not really what these characters are after.  And even if it were, a reckoning isn’t attainable, is it?  Finding the girl’s killer might offer some clarity along some margin, but it doesn’t change much of anything else.  So there will be no revenge, no resolution, no reckoning, and ultimately no justice.  That’s just the way it goes in Ebbing, Missouri.

So this makes its way over the $6 bar for some compelling characters and some good scenes. But, too many question marks and not enough Woody limit its upside.  So despite the gaudy critical acclaim elsewhere, this one won’t be filling space in the Best of L&D for 2017, which is coming sooner than you probably think!

The Running Man, Running Scared, the other Running Scared, Cool Runnings, Cannonball Run, even Chicken Run.  These are movies where run in the title, often the gerund form of the word, means that the action moves along at a running-like pace.  So, if you are looking for a fast-paced action movie, you might be excused if you think Blade Runner 2049 will fit that mold. But, I am here to tell you that that is not the case, and the pace of the movie is more like that of metal rusting.  Many critics have mistakenly cited 2049 as the year when the story takes place, when it is actually the approximate running time…

It’s not that there isn’t any action.  Indeed, the title character, “K” (Ryan Gosling), travels from a farm outside of L.A., back to the inner city, to a dump back out yonder, and even off to Sin City, getting his head beaten in at every stop.  But the movie sure takes its sweet time between stops.  In this sense — and probably in more senses I’m willing to admit — the movie is reminiscent of another sequel from earlier this year, War for the Planet of the Apes, where the technical aspects were overwhelmingly awesome, but we spent a lot of time watching the actors emote rather than actually do anything.  Instead of people in ape costumes pretending to be human, we have humans pretending to be robots trying to be human.  On the other hand, if your idea of a good time is watching Ryan Gosling lay down and take a nap in a snowstorm, then you are in for a real treat.

Aside from my objections about the pacing, I loved it.  The Blade Runner this time is indubitably one of these very humany “replicant” robots, so much so that he doesn’t really even have a name: “K” is short for KD9-3.7, his model number or somesuch.  This is a change from the original, where it doesn’t even seem to be a question as to whether the title character, Deckard, (Harrison Ford) is a human or a replicant.  Then that question sort of insinuates itself into your consciousness and all of a sudden it’s like, holy crap, what did Edward J. Olmos just do?  What he did was drop a truth bomb that makes it rather obvious that Deckard himself is a replicant (though L remains in denial on this point), and you are left sitting in a stupor as the ending credits roll.  But, if you didn’t believe it coming out of the first movie, this movie is unlikely to clear things up for you.

What is certain is that the world is hurtling towards an apocalypse.  Blade Runner 2049 finds us in some sort of post-apocalyptic state stemming from a 10-year blackout.  Whatever happened left cities empty and laid ecosystems to waste, leaving us without any flowers or trees or things that grow, farming worms for protein.  The movie alternates between foggy mist and various shades of rust, and I don’t remember seeing the sun once.  The settings weren’t as convincing as they were disturbing, and the movie reveals more than enough to be disturbed about.

This all seems bad enough, but the movie’s real thesis is that the apocalypse will take another form, with technology and robots and artificial intelligence insinuating themselves in such a way that pushes the human race towards irrelevance and, ultimately, obsolescence. One endpoint, for example, is that we have a ridiculously good looking robot (Gosling) hanging out with a ridiculously good looking hologram of a young woman.  In this case that hologram is a young “product” aptly named Joi (Ana de Armas), who is tasked with keeping K company and sporting whatever fashion captures the replicant’s fancy these days.  At some point, technology will be able to replicate and exceed the best (and worst) humankind has to offer, and how are we mere mortals supposed to compete with that?

The movie actually provides something of an answer to this question.  It’s not that humans are worthless, far from it.  Human ingenuity is the straw that stirs the drink here, at least for the time being.  Modern technology can take the best of what we have to over, bringing the greats back to life – Elvis, Sinatra, Carrie Fisher – now and whenever.  The only thing modern technology can’t do is bring back the nature that is so dearly missed.  And, like in the first film, the replicants soak up as much rain and snow and trees and flowers as they possibly can, because feeling the rain and snow on your face is pretty awesome, even if watching someone else do it gets a little tedious.

The great irony here is that the main human character is a police lieutenant (Robin Wright) who sees it as her purpose to “maintain order.” The irony is that the order of the day is the slow march to human extinction at the hands of its own creations.  We saw this story not too long ago in Alien: Covenant, with Guy Pearce playing god in that one, and the notion of a creator was no small part of the original Blade Runner.  This theme simmers throughout the movie, as after Wright and Olmos, I am not sure how many characters are in the definitely human category.   The upshot is that this movie is not so much about what it means to be human as it is about what happens when technology methodically pushes humans to the brink of extinction.  If you are on the human side of this one, “maintaining order” seems like the wrong choice.

The movie had a lot of other cool stuff going on, the visual awesomeness being the most obvious.  Talk about setting the tone.  We watched the 3D reel and it was beautiful and pretty seamless.   And there really were some interesting characters and some reasonable action when they got around to showing it. The big story is that Harrison Ford returns as Deckard, and once again he shows why he is our greatest American movie icon.  He, too, takes his turn kicking the crap out of K and then gives his dog some booze. Incredible.  It is also not clear whether the dog is a robot or not, and, once again, it doesn’t really matter.  I will go back just to see that part of the story arc.  Sean Young also returns from the original, and she hasn’t aged a day.

We also get some new characters, of course.  Jared Leto is appropriately creepy and objectionable as the creator of the new class of  replicant.  He makes Tyrell from the first movie seem like St. Francis of Assisi.  One of Leto’s creations is his love interest, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), who is exceedingly convincing in her role as the evil robot bagman, making Leto of secondary interest.  We also get to see a rather unusual sex scene involving K, Joi, and Mariette (Mackenzie Davis), possibly the most original thing in the entire movie.  Upon reflection, I don’t think it makes one bit of difference to the story line if Mariette is a human or a replicant.  I am guessing she’s human, but she certainly bears more than a passing resemblance to the spectacular Daryl Hannah replicant character from the first movie. So, who  knows? And, ultimately, who cares?

And so it goes with this one.  More questions than answers as far as the details go, but the big picture is clear enough.  It’s only a matter of time before the robots take over;  we will just have to wait to see whether it’s the good or the bad ones in charge when all that orange dust finally settles.

Atomic Blonde is the latest in a series of movie-length music videos, this one featuring the synthy sounds and backbeats of the late 1980s.  The movie’s action is set in East Berlin right at the cusp of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the script is that of a low-grade Cold War espionage thriller.

The movie features Charlize Theron in the role of “Blonde, James Blonde,” a female incarnation of the invincible British secret agent, only Theron drinks Stoli on ice, no vermouth.  We first find her soaking in a tub of ice water with a body full of bumps and bruises and cuts and lacerations (but, remarkably, no broken bones, no limp, no discernible handicap), and then the movie proceeds to show us how she got that way. The film isn’t shy about showing Theron in the buff, beginning with an extended scene of her checking her beaten up body out in the mirror, but also featuring a couple of gratuitous lesbian exchanges.

If you don’t think about it terribly hard, the plot itself is pretty straightforward.  Theron sits down in an interview room with her “superior” (Toby James, that round-faced dude from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) and American CIA agent (John Goodman). There is also an even more superior boss man watching through the glass that probably signifies something important here, though not important enough for me to try to figure out. Theron then details how she was sent to East Berlin to meet up with a British agent embedded in the terrain (David MacAvoy) and recover some sort of important list that seems to be contained inside some guy’s watch.  Meanwhile, a young French agent (Sofia Boutella) is following Theron around taking pictures about as inconspicuously as a fashion model in a skin-tight leather suit riding around on a motorcycle in Communist Eastern Europe could back in those days.  Then there are a bunch of Russians and local thugs, and, well, you’ll figure it out.

But, who needs a plot when we’ve got action?  And there is plenty of action to go around. Theron survives at least three major car crashes and is in a couple of extended hand-to-hand melees reminiscent of early Apollo Creed-Rocky Balboa bouts (at one point L shouted: “Stay down, kid, stay down”).  Indeed, one of those fisticuffs was about three minutes too long, so it turned from drama to comedy as the kids in the back of the theater began to laugh, but it segued into a terrific car chase scene that probably constituted the best few minutes of the movie.

Then again, I’m not sure this movie was even an action movie.  It might be better described as a vehicle for Charlize Theron to show off her super awesome self in some super awesome clothing, with her duds even matching the lampshade at one point according to my more fashion-sensitive companion.  This was partly utilitarian, as she beat at least one person to death with her shoe.  But I was concerned from a narrative standpoint about how she fit an entire wardrobe into such a tiny suitcase.  Perhaps she went shopping?   But where do you get a screaming red dress in East Berlin in 1989?  The questions pile up quickly in this one.

It is also possible that the movie is Theron’s response to getting passed over for the Wonder Woman role — she is definitely gorgeous and she definitely shows her chops as an action hero, even grabbing a bright yellow lasso of justice (a staple in most urban eastern bloc households, for sure) and beating the crap out of a bunch of Commie henchmen at one point. I guess you’d have to ask her.

Overall, over the $5 bar for its excellent music video qualities, but that’s kind of assuming you’ve seen the many high-quality action movies already out this summer – Wonder Woman, Spider Man, Baby Driver, Dunkirk.   It also assumes you sit in the theater with the good sound system (e.g., the Marcus SuperScreen DLX) for you to get your 99 Luftballoons on.

When writing this up I learned that this was directed by the guy who got his directorial start with John Wick, and, there it is, I buried the lede.   Evidently, he is also directing the second Deadpool movie, so here’s hoping that one goes a little better.

If you are ready for some top-flight man on monkey violence, then War for the Planet of the Apes is the movie for you.   But it is so much more than that.   It is a nuanced exploration of racism, sexism, compassion, and possibly the greatest cinematic meditation on existential philosophy since The Seventh Seal.

Nah, I’m just kidding. It really just amounts to some good only man on monkey violence.  It’s not that the movie doesn’t try to do the things listed above, it just doesn’t do them very well.  The apes are generally set up in the “good camp” and the humans in the “bad camp” in this one, and we spend probably an hour of the movie literally watching the apes ape various stages of grief and angst and heartbreak while we wait around for the film to get to Woody Harrelson.

But, get to them they finally do, featuring one spectacular, borderline insane expository monologue that nearly saves the film along a number of fronts.  By the time they got around to the monologue, I had almost completely checked from the story, but he introduced enough material to bring the story back in play.  He is also able to almost — almost — blur the “good ape, bad man” line with his historic account, enough to give us a little sympathy for the human side.  Like the greats, he makes those around him better, so things that had been annoying me to that point got a little less annoying. But, alas, even the Hestonesque charismatic burst doesn’t save the film, and what we are left with is a few great pieces of film making in a movie that is pretty stupid and at least an hour too long (but do check out L’s review for a pro’s perspective on some of the legitimate cinematic achievements).

There are a couple of big plusses here.  Some of the action is great, including a super awesome wrinkle in the climactic scene.  Although I am kind of bashing on the movie here, even haters like me will take the drama seriously enough to enjoy the action in the context of the dramatic narrative, unlike action for action’s sake in, say, the Transformers or Alien v. Predator movies.  It’s probably worth mentioning again that Woody is must-see tv.  And, finally, this is one of the few movies where you can feel license to enjoy the fabulous Marcus 128 oz soda specials, because there are plenty of spaces between the pauses here to take a pit stop or two.

Over the $5 bar for some great action and for Woody, but I would have been willing to pay more for less for this one.

Spider Man: Homecoming is really a special piece of film making, melding the chase-the- bad-guys-and-blow-stuff up action movie with the poignant teen adolescent drama to make for a really enjoyable experience.  We went in with high expectations, and we did not leave disappointed.  This is the sixth Spider Man movie in recent memory, and I will put it neck-and-neck with Spider Man 2 (the Doc Oc one) as the best of the lot.  Judging by the packed house and the generally enthusiastic audience response, this movie is going to make like a zillion dollars.

I was really feeling the adult-adolescent nexus portrayals here and, despite not being a superhero myself, found the Tony Stark grooming his protege angle quite compelling. At one point I leaned over to L and said, “I am really identifying with the authority figures here.”  In the front end of the movie, the adults generally didn’t know what was going on with the younger set, and mostly didn’t care, either.  Rather than Scooby Doo the whole thing, the plot suggests that this cuts both ways — in some cases the adults should be listening, but in others the kids really are meddling when they should be minding their own business.  Jon Favreau is occasionally funny as the mostly inept intermediary for the Spidey-Tony relationship.   Then, remarkably, the story spins this to illustrate that in many cases the kids don’t know what’s going on with the adults, either.  This makes for some excellent dramatic narrative and a couple genuine surprises, not something that is characteristic of superhero genre.

The adults here included many of the usual suspects, with Tony Stark and Iron Man being central characters throughout.  This is the first Spidey movie set squarely in the Marvel Universe on the heels of the Captain America: Civil War story trajectory.  One consequence of this is that the plot line involves Michael Keaton building a criminal enterprise on the back of repurposing alien technology left behind in that affair.   Keaton eventually shows himself as the Vulture, more than possibly a hat tip to his role in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which is amusing for a number of reasons.  The Vulture isn’t particularly interesting, but the plot built around him is.  The story sets up and mostly moves along at a good clip, without pausing too much to show off.  A second consequence is that Spidey has access to a suit equipped with Stark technology, so the high-tech elements of the Iron Man series are pervasive within this new universe.   I had mixed feelings about the high-tech Spider Man, as most of it was done really well and is consistent with the technology frontiers in these other movies. On the other hand, c’mon, man!

Mostly for better, this movie does not begin with the genesis story and does not dwell on the guilt over Uncle Ben’s death that is so central to the other two Spider Man movie incarnations (and the comic books I remember from my youth).  As Fenwick would probably say, it’s been done.  The movie also strips Peter Parker of his solely internal struggles, as he inadvertently reveals to his buddy that he is Spider Man, so much of the movie involves the interplay with these two rather than Peter going it alone.  This revelation is probably one of the reasons why the writers were able to develop the adolescent characters and setting so well.  There is plenty to say about that, too, so the movie leaves us with a lot to chew on.

A couple other things, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May worked well, and she got at least one great line in (or most of it, at least).  Tyne Daly (Cagney or Lacey) shows up as a government security bigwig, which is nice, though her role is perfunctory.  And Michael Mando of Breaking Bad fame is evidently being groomed as the next super villain, and what’s not to like about that?

Overall, well above the $5 bar.  I found myself laughing out loud, including several times when I was the only one in the theater doing so.  At other points, the theater laughed whilst I nodded or maybe grinned.  There is definitely something for most of us.   I’m guessing I will see it again (and again and again on TNT).