Review – Page 15 – L&D Report

Sicario: Day of the Soldado

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When we sat down to watch Sicario: Day of the Soldado, audible laughter erupted from our seats as Josh Brolin reappeared. Josh has starred in 3 of the last 4 films we have seen. Including Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2. In LA it’s often said that at any given time there are two million unemployed actors in the city. So I my next question is — How great is Josh Brolin’s Agent?! Brolin himself has either made a deal with the devil or Creative Artists Agency — or I suspect both. I don’t actually know who his agent is but I know that when I lived in LA and drove by the ominous, sleek and cold, CAA building, which is larger than most embassies, I always got a good case of the heebie-jeebies. Not to mention what I always imagined was the amount of espionage, a la The Conversation, the telephoto lenses and wiretapping devices that were set up across the Avenue of the Stars from CAA at The Hyatt Regency Century Plaza to get the upper hand on the latest deal making. …But hey, sure, it’s all just a product of my overly active imagination.

Meanwhile back at Marcus Cinema in Appleton, Wisconsin, in my red leather “DreamLounger” reclining La-Z-Boy in theater 14…the lights seemed awfully bright. For some reason, at the start of Sicario, the house lights never dimmed. D even got up and went out there and told the staff…but nada changed. One thing this did was help me realize how dark this film actually is. I mean literally dark. Many scenes have crushed blacks that under these circumstances where wiped out. I’m sure cinematographer Dariusz Wolski’s head would have exploded had he been in attendance. The other thing this lighting snafu brought to my attention is what a tightly wound story Sicario is…well at least until the end, where it goes off the rails, jumps the shark, what have you. But there was no way I was going to get up and complain about the lights and miss any of this. I figured D had taken one for the team already, after all.

A kudos goes to writer Taylor Sheridan, who also wrote one of my 2016 favorites Hell or High Water. Sicario strongly develops the secondary, or supporting characters. It helps make the drama a lot more meaningful when you know where a character is coming from, metaphorically.

On the other hand, there is a place where this story logically ends. But then it begins again. Personally, I have a pet peeve regarding epilogues. It shows a lack of confidence in the audience and a certain amount of uncertainty in the artist. An appeasement at best, a setting up of the next film, akin to a commercial, at worst. I’m sure there are plenty of valid financial or political or possibly even creative reasons for epilogues but they always fall flat for me. Most of the time I have to have someone else explain the endings of movies to me — and that’s fine with me.

One other thing, from someone who has worked on several films in Mexico and heard complaints about this. A border story is like the low lying fruit on the creative tree in terms of storytelling regarding Mexico. Yes, in its obvious, tangible way, it has a built in drama that people can easily relate to on a dramatic level. And well told, a border story like Sicario, can be extremely effective. But there are plenty of other great films coming out of Mexico all the time. Instant classics like Amores Perros and really great more recent films like Güeros.

Let’s for a moment talk about the insane coolness of Benicio del Toro. This guy has the charisma and presence of a modern day John Wayne. I was sitting in a cafe on Vermont Avenue in Los Feliz one night when he shows up at the door. The only sound you could hear was the wait staff falling over one another to get to the guy. It. Was. Eerie. I just wonder what makes someone like that think he can just get a grilled cheese at 11:45 on a Tuesday night and not throw the equilibrium of the entire universe totally off. But even more than that, he needs Brolin’s agent.

Uncle Drew

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The TBI was off the charts for this film, stretching way past the point where you order your chalupa, at least 15 cars deep. That should have been my first clue that Uncle Drew would surpass my admittedly low expectations. I have been burned many times by films that rely on a star athlete to try and carry a feature. As a basketball film with an African-American cast, wouldn’t Uncle Drew rely on the same disappointing jokes and stereotypes that we have all suffered through a thousand times? And yet, it didn’t. The theme of the film is somewhere between family is right in front of you if you can see it / ego can destroy the greatest talent / you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.

Is Uncle Drew formulaic? Yes. It is about as formulaic as you can get and yet it’s such an enjoyable ride, you don’t really mind. From an aesthetic point of view, it’s beautifully shot. RED digital cameras have truly come into their own. There was a great mix of glamorous photography along with arching action shots. In terms of the make up, I think the film should be nominated for an Academy Award for prosthetics. It was fantastic to see folks you recognize look straight up geriatric. At the same time, it’s sort of believable that someone who is dedicated to something like say playing the drums, riding a bike or playing basketball could excel at it after not playing for decades. More than muscle memory, the film makes a case for love of the game.

The acting in the film also raised it above what I expected going in and made it greater than the sum of its parts. You could see the actors were in tune with their characters. Even in the bloopers, where thankfully the only mom joke in the entire film can be found, the main character, Dax, strongly played by Lil Rel Howery, says he wouldn’t know, he is an orphan. It goes to show how deep the actors prepared and how the characters had many dimensions and motivations to guide their performances.

As a basketball playing fanatic for many years I appreciated the film on another level as well. Sure, looking back on schoolyard hoops there are the great moments, the bad moments and the moments you tell your therapist about but the point is, as Uncle Drew points out, you don’t stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing. I’m glad these geezers got together to once again throw down the rock.

Book Club

Okay, this movie was really funny. You could hear people laughing all the way up in the rafters of our local Marcus Cinema (for those not in the US Midwest, it’s a nice movie chain with reclining seats at the location L & D frequent — which is one of the reasons we frequent it.) While driving to this film I had a sort of similar feeling as I had before going into Blockers. Is this movie for me? For the L & D? I suggested to D that maybe he should be taking his wife to this. But I have to say, I was way off base. Book Club is actually a great buddy movie. And in attending new release films as much as we have I’ve learned that the great strength in movies is exposing people to other people, places and things they might not have any idea about…and realize how much they are similar and even how much they might like those odd people, places and things. I’ve realized that every movie is for everyone. You may not like it, you may even end up walking out but that movie was made for you to enjoy. (Except Mother!, if you enjoyed that you would enjoy an extended weekend in Palm Springs in June locked in a room with Rex Reed while he was forced, Clockwork Orange style, to watch a marathon session of Melissa McCarthy and Jodie Foster movies.) But yes, for most of the rest of us the real beauty of Cinema is being able to viscerally experience these foreign yet familiar dimensions, places, spaces and human emotions. It’s not something to be ashamed of but rather celebrated!

One thing about Book Club that immediately gets your attention is how easy on the eyes Jane Fonda is. At age 80, she has the sex appeal of a person half her age — let’s face it, even younger. I wanted to run home and try to dig up her Jane Fonda Workout VHS tapes from the 1980s. It’s here I will admit to wearing leg warmers during the winter of 1982… as a fashion statement. I know it doesn’t make it right, but all the kids were doing it. Though perhaps Jane Fonda is best known to youngsters for her bombshell role in the cult classic Barbarella, I had recently watched her 1978 masterpiece Coming Home, for which she won the best actress Oscar. And deservedly so. Her acting range was impeccable. There was even a steamy sex scene which I think fit right into the zeitgeist of the times— the post-Vietnam War reckoning and the cocaine fueled to hell with it attitude of the free love disco generation. In other words, Jane Fonda carried Book Club with her pinky.

The rest of the cast was also fantastic, with Mary Steenburgen, Candice Bergen, Diane Keaton reprising Annie Hall, Craig T. Nelson, Don Johnson and Richard Dreyfuss. I would give a special nod to Andy Garcia, whose character Mitchell was an understated and graceful study who was totally believable and likable. Also of note, the entire storyline of Steenburgen slipping Craig T. Nelson a couple of Viagara while out on a date…this is a riot and played particularly well.

So there is a lot of excellent going on with Book Club. Of course, like A Quiet Place, it’s not realistic (No, I will not let that go.) in that it’s unlikely that these ladies of a certain age would be hooking up with dudes of a certain age 10 years younger. And in this, the film plays more like an adaptation of a romance novel. But honestly, who cares, we are at Book Club to be entertained and entertained we are. We can see how truly amazing Jane Fonda is, so anything else can also be believed. Why not? Why not keep looking for love, falling in love and most importantly believing you deserve happiness, your entire life. It’s a great message to remember and try to live out.

Solo

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We were heading to the theater with reasonably modest expectations when were shocked to see at least a dozen cars in the drive-through line at the Taco Bell. L&D readers probably know that we use the Taco Bell Index (TBI) to predict the quality of the movie we are about to see, and there was clearly a large number of people in east Appleton Jonesing for a chalupa prior to Solo. What could this possibly mean?

Even with the high TBI, it was hard to get too excited for this one after the high of Dead pool 2 last week, and L&D entered a mostly full theater not knowing quite what to expect.

What we got was a very solid three-star type movie, with a reasonable story line, some good characters, a few deviations from the standard love-story fare, and special effects like you would not believe. This “Star Wars story” is the origin story for Han Solo, of course, and so it touches base on how he springs Chewie (Chewie) from the clink, meets Lando (Donald Glover), and comes to own the Millennium Falcon. (Perhaps shockingly, they passed over the origin story for the iconic scar on the chin.) Also included is Emelia Clarke as Han’s possible love interest and Woody Harrelson as his mentor of sorts. Both are pretty convincing and are not given the wooden scripts we suffered through in some of the past episdodes.

This is a Star Wars movie, so we get Star Wars scenes: a couple of bar scenes with wacky characters and gambling, a pod-race type thing in the “great train robbery” scene, and undertones of various vanilla political statements, the standard recipe. The story was pretty solid and the pacing done well enough to keep me awake (a higher bar than you’d probably think). Also on the plus side, Woody is pretty good and Chewie is great. And, I have to say that the movie did not wind down in the way I expected at all, which was great. Indeed, at one point I spontaneously raised my arms in triumph in response to a plot twist that I didn’t see coming. I was reminded of seeing Frozen because it sets up as formulaic, but then that isn’t quite where it goes. So there are some very fresh aspects to the movie that I really liked. Even the really objectionably stupid plot elements (e.g., the big monster with the gravity bong thing) were mostly used to set up the extraordinary special effects that set L’s head a spinning.

But, the big question is review land seems to be why did this movie need to be made? Is it essential? That seems rather pedantic given it’s Disney advancing its general Disney interests. From our perspective, we got a pretty good story, some fun characters, spectacular special effects, and a giant bucket of popcorn. And the crowd was pretty upbeat on the way out of the theater, even if the Taco Bell line was down to just one car by the time we passed on our way home.

Deadpool 2

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I’ve discovered that the worst thing you can do is have high expectations going into a film. But I just couldn’t help it. And I am glad I did. Like the original, this segment of the Deadpool series was outlandish, intense, funny and zany. So if you enjoyed Deadpool, this installment won’t let you down.

Before I get into the review I want to point out that a stunt person died in a motorcycle crash making the film. In our day and age, this should under no circumstances ever happen. It’s just a movie, people. The film was dedicated to the stunt person, S.J. Harris. I hope that producers, directors and everyone who is involved in filmmaking takes safety precautions on-set seriously. Yes, sometimes there are risks in getting shots, but they shouldn’t be life threatening.

Also of note, The L & D Report was honored by the presence of a special guest, the filmmaker, author, musician, artist and storyteller, Frank Anderson. We had recently attended a screening of his fantastic film, “The Life of Reilly” about Charles Nelson Reilly. It was great getting Frank’s angle and insight and just hanging out at the popcorn stand with him.

I read a good article about movies last week in the New York Times, “Dystopia, Apocalypse, Culture War: 2018 or 1968?” The article posits that in 1968 the status quo in society seemed to be upended and films of the times like Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey, reflected that. So what does Deadpool 2 say about us as a society? I will just mention the existential aspect of the film. Like in Life of Pi, we love to tell ourselves stories about the afterlife. And if there isn’t one? Well that’s not very cinematic, is it? It’s always interesting to experience what creative filmmakers think the afterlife will be like and that holds true here. The story itself is deft at shifting emotional gears. From being self-reflexive, self-deprecating and hilariously absurd to hitting you with the deepest feelings of wonder about life, Deadpool 2 never misses a zinger or an emotional beat.

As opposed to the depressed feeling around us after the ending of Avengers: Infinity War, the crowd at the end of Deadpool 2 was pumped up and almost riotous. If there had been an announcement that Deadpool 3 would begin immediately, the entire audience would have just rolled with it. Deadpool 2 is already a cult classic and with reason, this may be the only feature that can seamlessly thread references to Taylor Swift’s cats and scissoring.

Deadpool 2

Deadpool 2 hit the theaters Thursdays, and L&D (with special guest, F) were totally prepared. Unlike the MCU compendium buckshot mess that came out a few weeks ago, this one did not disappoint. After a brief L&D&F discussion about how rare it was to see a quality movie trailer, we were treated to an R-rated (?) trailer for The Happytime Murders, featuring an extended puppet silly-string money shot — one of many indignities on display — that really set the stage for the evening’s entertainment. Next up was the requisite Greg Marcus appearance, this time featuring him in a comedic role as an opera singer, possibly his best work yet as the affable opening act. Did he do this just for DP2?

And on with the show.

Deadpool 2 is a seriously hilarious follow up to the original that co-topped the L&D list for 2016, for its action sequences targeting 15-year old boys and jokes targeting middle-aged men. For instance, this is pretty much straight up a Terminator rip off, with Cable (Josh Brolin, who else?) playing Arnold and Deadpool playing the intermediary instead of that Kyle guy. It also pays a fairly serious tribute to the James Bond films. And Superman. I was catching references to and fro throughout, which leads me to believe I missed a lot of stuff that you will find funny that I simply missed. I ran into a college student who saw it and loved it and she didn’t know it was one big hat tip to Terminator.

How could you not know that? Kids these days.

Overall, we are treated to the same cast of characters and follow pretty much the same formula. Can you follow up that brilliant opening sequence from the first one? Yes, you can. I wouldn’t exactly call it brilliant, but I laughed and then re-laughed as the gag went along. All of our favorite characters from last time were back, and aside from T.J. Miller I think they were all as good or better than what we saw in the first movie. The X-Men in training scene was outstanding, and the super gang sequence that you keep seeing in trailers is superbly ridiculous and fantastic.

This is so much better than Infinity War that I can’t even tell you. That Infinity War has a 68 Metacritic score right now compared to only a 66 for DP2 is both disgraceful and instructive. Once again the theater was packed on opening night, but this time the crowd was raucous and festive and roared throughout the closing credit sequence, which really couldn’t have been any better. The biggest disappointment of the evening is that it didn’t last longer, though the final shot was pretty much a perfect ending. Maybe Marvel will do us all a favor and have Pool come in and save the next Avengers movie.

UPDATE: Not everyone thinks the puppet finishing its business is all that funny.

A Quiet Place

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L&D braved the first major lightning storm of the year to sit through the ultra-creepy A Quiet Place. The film is set in some post-apocalyptic world, with John Krasinski and family doing their farming and fishing and, um, reproducing in relative isolation and near-absolute quiet, steering clear of whatever is on the prowl outside. I will admit to curling up in a ball a few times and jumping out of my seat once or twice, perhaps three times. Maybe four. The Marcus deluxe recliners were virtually perfect for squirming purposes.

The best part of this movie is its pacing and its ability to create suspense and tension. This is the rare film that you say you should see in the theater because of the lack of sound — the silence was seriously unsettling and destabilizing. I also liked that it took care of business and then some in under 90 minutes. Well done. (It also features the best illustration of the dangers of a grain silo since Witness).

The worst part is that the setting and resolution are so wildly implausible that L wouldn’t keep quiet about it on the way home. But, even so, he agreed it was pretty scary — I’m pretty sure he closed his eyes and missed the climax! We both agreed that that this movie was as advertised, and we even reminisced about the high-quality suspense and mystery created in 10 Cloverfield Lane, a movie we both liked, but I don’t think we reviewed.

So, if you like being scared without too much in the way of blood and gore, you should check this one out.

Avengers: Infinity War

L&D made our way out to join a packed theater for the Appleton Premier of the new Avengers movie Thursday night, and it was an overwhelming experience. To our right was a mom and dad with their eight-year old kid. The kid lost it near the end of the movie (does this movie end?) and the dad picked her up and carried her out, telling his wife that he’d see her back at home.

To our left was a young couple, possibly out on a date night, and at the conclusion of the end scene the young woman expressed her frustration thusly:

“I just can’t with this movie.”

Astonishingly, the movie is generally getting solid reviews, though many of the things posted at Metacritic as favorable didn’t seem terribly positive. As you probably know, the movie represents a convergence of the near-infinite components of the the Marvel universe, including The Avengers, Spiderman, the Black Panther, Dr. Strange, and the Guardians of the Galaxy characters. The story arc is putatively a continuation of what was going on with these, and we get some good laughs and some decent action as the movie ramps up in its first hour. The scene where Thor meets the Guardians crew is a highlight. The new Spiderman continues to impress and save scenes. And Peter Dinklage as an oversized dwarf was a big plus.

After that, though, it just doesn’t stop. As L again points out — why didn’t he write this review? — if *anything* can happen, there is no suspense. After a few set up scenes we get 100 minutes of non-stop action, brilliant special effects, windows to other dimensions, mortals fighting gods, gods fighting mortals, dogs and cats living together, pandemonium. The movie pretty much suffers from the same flaws as those epic X-Men movies that even TNT wont show, only at an even massiver scale. Yes, I said massiver. Understatement is not the issue here.

As the packed house filed out of the theater, L observed that the mood of the crowd was that of leaving a ballgame after a big loss. If you have ever gone to a game where a frenzied crowd is expecting a W and the home team lays an egg instead, you probably know what I mean. Probably right at the $6 bar, but we paid $10 to see it in 3-D. I think we’re all looking forward to the next one, but not because we liked this one.

Anxiously awaiting Deadpool 2!

Book plug: As part of our first quid pro quo, I would like to tell you about a book former Champaign Mayor Don Gerard calls “a minor masterpiece of modern fiction,” Cocaine Zombies, by Scott Lerner. If you like cocaine or zombies or Urbana-Champaign, there is something for you in this book. It is definitely on my summer reading list when I get around to updating it.

Chappaquiddick

For an audience member it helps to have a someone to sympathize with when watching a movie. This film’s sole sympathetic character is gone early on and we are left trying to rationalize the motives of a self-centered drunk who has committed manslaughter. The drunk happens to be Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy. It’s a long slog for the audience. There is a point where you realize that America would have believed anything out of Ted Kennedy’s mouth perhaps out of a profound guilt for the assassination of his brothers. Through this, he got a pass on the manslaughter of Mary Jo Kopechne. In 2018, making a movie about her life would have been more apropos. After all, what happened at Chappaquiddick and Kennedy’s subsequent life has been discussed and written about ad nauseam.

Mary Jo Kopechne was dedicated to the Civil Rights Movement. That’s what “the cause” referred to in the film is. She lived in Montgomery, Alabama for a year and was an active part of the Movement. As much as “the cause” was the shield Kennedy and his team of lawyers/mad men/diplomats hid behind to force his exoneration, Mary Jo Kopechne was a true believer.

I thought the film did a lot of things correctly, the death of Kopechne was handled deftly and painfully. The juxtaposition of Ted turning the light off in his hotel room while Mary Jo recited the Hail Mary and Our Father in the air bubble that remained of the submerged car was haunting and powerful. But the rest of the film tells us what we know. That Kennedy’s statement of what happened doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Not even various versions of it told in the film make much sense. Except to say that a cover up occurred and that Kennedy, having driven off a bridge drunk, unable to save Mary Jo, if he even tried, feared he would have been imprisoned and left the scene. Ted’s remorse is always about how he is seen in the eyes of his father and never about the innocent life that he took. When he reads a nationally televised statement, he chooses to seek forgiveness but not announce his resignation.

The film, though successful in being period accurate and in delivering some scope with aerial shots and a regatta scene, soon becomes a suffocating exercise in long phone calls and cramped rooms. Pretty early on I was left to ask, why should I care if he gets off or not — I know he gets off — the damage is done. More karma than irony, as Ted’s presidential dreams are dashed by Mary Jo’s death, his brothers’ greatest aspiration, a successful lunar landing, occurrs simultaneously.

Unlike another political film which we saw last week, the dark, absurdist drama, The Death of Stalin, the acting in Chappaquiddick never comes to life. If the intention was understatement, then the statement was entirely buried. Like the story itself, the acting seemed to be simply going through the motions. Unlike in The Death of Stalin, I was never wondering what’s going to happen next. That sense of curiosity and intrigue is something else the audience deserves and expects from a film that purports to be a narrative drama.

This film would be a winner if screened for an ethics class but outside of that I would tack away from from Chappaquiddick as hard as possible.

Death of Stalin

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L&D had to venture out of our comfort zone (and discount price zone!) to catch Death of Stalin on the other side of town. The eponymous title is pretty much the story, Stalin dies and then the real class struggle begins to replace him. The acting is remarkable, with Jeffrey Tambor as a serviceable Georgy Malenkov (the heir apparent) and Steve Buscemi as a great Khrushchev (the inevitable apparent). But the star of the show is Simon Russell Beale who is other-worldly in his role as the head of state security, Lavrentiy Beria, with a performance that is so convincing, so troubling, I was physically unsettled for most of the film. Beale’s performance exceeds what we saw with Gary Oldman as Churchill, for sure.

The movie is ostensibly a black comedy, and there are many, many laugh out loud moments, but I felt guilty laughing because the truth was probably even more horrible than what we were seeing on the screen. It is kind of funny that there are no real doctors left in Moscow because Stalin eliminated them in his many purges, but Stalin really did eliminate these folks. And Beria probably did line up a different little girl to rape every night. And half of the world really was in the charge of folks who wouldn’t think twice about killing you over some real or perceived or contrived transgression. Buscemi as Khrushchev emerging as the voice of reason is both a relief and horrifying all at once.

It’s fair to say that the movie is more than a sum of its acting, as the set pieces, costumes, and general tenor are all convincing and excellent, and contribute to the unease that certainly will fill any thinking person.

So, big, big ups from L&D, with the caveat that maybe it’s better not to think too hard about the fact versus fiction in this one, as the facts are probably even worse than what this movie shows and implies.