REVIEW: Atomic Blonde

26 07 2017

Pick some earwax and you’ll miss it, but a news anchor in the background of David Leitch’s “Atomic Blonde” makes a telling remark as he pivots away from the Berlin Wall’s collapse toward entertainment news. “Sampling,” he asks, “is it art, or is it just plagiarism?” It’s an amusing pop culture callback that functions, likely unwittingly, as a moment of self-interrogation.

“Atomic Blonde” careens back and forth between pastiche, homage and outright theft in its late-’80s espionage romp through a divided Berlin. There’s value in having the agent behind these actions be an unapologetically badass Charlize Theron, a spy who knows few boundaries be they legal, moral or sexual. Also, her first hit to her (primarily) male assailants is typically in the groin region.

But why, oh why, is her opening credits strut set to David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)?” That song is now clearly associated with Shoshanna’s empowerment montage in “Inglourious Basterds?” The film boasts a soundtrack full of Reagan-era rock touchstones, and finding another one that did not so immediately recall the work of a superior filmmaker would not be hard.

Screenwriter Kurt Johnstad also insists on a “True Detective” Season 1 style framing device with Theron’s Lorraine Braughton, beaten and bruised, recounting her story in a dark room to two interrogators. It’s a stark contrast to the film’s otherwise blue and pink neon-soaked action, so fluorescent you can’t help but wonder if Nicolas Winding Refn is lurking in some corner offscreen silently brooding. The one exception to the otherwise humdrum proceedings is an ornate combat and escape sequence meant to look like one take (but look closely and you’ll see plenty of cheat cuts masked by whip pans). It’s not a crime to be unoriginal; heck, plenty of other summer 2017 release would be in movie jail if so. But “Atomic Blonde” manages to be that as well as uninspired. C / 


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REVIEW: Patriots Day

15 04 2017

The narrative elements of “Patriots Day” show Peter Berg at the top of his game. As a film that recreates the terror of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the frenzied search to catch the perpetrators, it’s every bit as taught and harrowing as “Lone Survivor.” Critique ideology all you want – and I had my fair share of issues with the comforting yet alarming deployment of the surveillance state – but objectively speaking, Berg and his technicians know how to edit for maximum tension around an event whose outcome we already know.

Now, you might have noticed that I specified “narrative elements.” That was intentional. “Patriots Day” ends on a lengthy postscript of talking-head style documentary footage with survivors of the bombing. It’s stirring, sure, but it left me wondering – why not just make a non-fiction film? The appetite for documentaries exists now thanks to platforms like Netflix and HBO.

In “Patriots Day,” fictionalization began to feel like trivialization. If the words of real people are powerful enough to end a film, they ought to be powerful enough to sustain a film. Why does Berg think we need Mark Wahlberg sermonizing from the back of a truck bed over sappy, inspiring music to care about the heroism of Boston’s finest? Why does he feel the need to compress the valiant actions of several police officers into one composite, Teddy Saunders, for Mark Wahlberg to play?

Berg tries to have it both ways in the film, leaning on both the authenticity of the survivors’ pain while also shoehorning reality into a convenient narrative device about one police officer who cracks open the case with a hobbled leg. (At times, his lickety-split reactions don’t even make logical sense!) If recent yanked from the headlines stories are going to continue to serve as fodder for cinema, we need to have a larger debate about how filmmakers can and cannot rely on actual participants. B+ / 


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REVIEW: Kong: Skull Island

7 03 2017

“Am I the story of the Negro in America?” asks a German major in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” as he tries to guess the name written on a card affixed to his forehead in a bar game. He gets a resounding “no” after running through a series of questions that could just as easily describe the importation of slaves. But he quickly pivots and rattles off, “Well, then, I must be King Kong.”

Traditionally in cinema – and fiction as a whole – our monsters mean something. They reflect the deep fears and anxieties of a society, ones that might not obviously rear their heads but can find vicarious expression through metaphor and transitive representation. In 1933’s version of “King Kong,” Tarantino saw a deeply symbolic tale about race in America. It’s too bad that “Kong: Skull Island,” the latest spin on the giant ape, arrives at a time of no racial tension and the complete absolution of prejudice based on ancestral origin. (Ha.)

But what kind of monster is Kong in Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ film? At first, the behemoth primate seems to be something between a colonialist allegory given the backdrop of the Vietnam War and a cautionary tale for human overreach in a technology-heavy era. The longer the film goes on, the more these aspects reveal themselves as clear offshoots of Vogt-Roberts’ key touchstones, “Apocalypse Now” and “Jurassic Park.” Then the real question of “Kong: Skull Island” arises. Is it worse if the filmmaking team (which includes four credited writers) have an undercooked meaning of the monster … or if there’s just no meaning at all?

We get the answer – it’s the latter of the two options – in a post-credits zinger. No spoilers about the contents of the scene, but Warner Bros. deliberately robs King Kong of any allegorical meaning to strip him down to pure commercialism. He’s now just another branded property, another franchise toy who can be trotted out in any number of series without being weighed down by cultural baggage. The ape who loomed large in the American imagination is now just another large CGI creation in a veritable zoo created by the VFX wizards that be. The whole film amounts to a less neon-bathed “Avatar,” a creature feature full of empty spectacle (and even less politicization).

Kong’s presence in the film is practically nonexistent, too. That includes implied appearances, a method to which Spielberg acolyte Vogt-Roberts fondly makes homage. The majority of “Kong: Skull Island” consists of a ragtag band of people who have been in too many action movies (Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, John Goodman) and those whose careers could use an action movie (Brie Larson, Thomas Mann, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell) trying to make it to the top of a mountain for rescue after a military mission goes south. Their journey has its enjoyable moments, but who really buys a ticket to a King Kong movie for pithy banter between photojournalists and cagey war veterans? B- / 


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REVIEW: 10 Cloverfield Lane

26 03 2016

I scarcely remember anything that happened in 2008’s “Cloverfield,” though I will never forget the nausea-inducing vertigo its constant shaky-cam gave me. I have a vague recollection of seeing the monster at the end (sorry if that spoiled something for anyone) and some kind of government cover-up of the whole thing. In other words, nothing had me clamoring for a sequel or offshoot.

Yet along comes “10 Cloverfield Lane,” directed by Dan Trachtenberg, written (to some extent) by “Whiplash” wunderkind Damien Chazelle and presumptively overseen by producer J.J. Abrams – and all of a sudden, they showed me that I did not know what I wanted. How refreshing to see a brand extension that serves as a brand revitalization. Rather than relying on the formula, mythology or beats of its predecessor, this bold new path in what now is supposedly a franchise delivers exactly what we need by giving us nothing we expected.

Most people remember “Cloverfield” chiefly for its marketing campaign. “10 Cloverfield Lane” arrived like Adele’s “25,” a teaser out of nowhere with the full product dropping shortly after. Ironically, the lead-up hardly presaged the experience. While the anticipation “Cloverfield” ultimately revealed thin substance, the somewhat muted hype machine surrounding “10 Cloverfield Lane” was only scratching the surface of the film’s tremendous impact. Trachtenberg’s film is like a master-class in suspense building, expertly and tautly edited to ratchet up the heat in every scene until it reaches a boiling point. In many ways, it could not be more different from “Cloverfield,” whose verité live video style relied on overwhelming the senses to communicate urgency and danger.

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REVIEW: Inside Llewyn Davis

17 01 2016

Inside Llewyn DavisCannes Film Festival – Official Competition, 2013

“If it was never new and it never gets old, it’s a folk song,” explains Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) after yet another gig strumming his guitar at Greenwich Village’s Gaslamp in”Inside Llewyn Davis.” The film is full of folk tunes in its soundtrack as it recreates the pre-Dylan early 1960s scene in New York. Yet, in many ways, the Coen Brothers’ film itself is a folk song, if judged by the definition they provide.

Llewyn’s story is all too familiar – and one that hits close to home for anyone yet to achieve the lofty success they were promised with every participation medal. Most stories of musicians trying to enter into the business involve some measure of pain and frustration, but for Llewyn, the bad breaks seem almost cosmic. He’s always a smidgen too early or a moment too late to shake off the funk that seems to set a tone of frustration and misery for his life. “King Midas’ idiot brother,” his ex-flame Jean (Carey Mulligan) describes him, and by the end of the film, such a mythological explanation for Llewyn’s woes seems entirely possible.

It proves frustrating to watch him endure trial after tribulation, though not because the beats are tired. The doomed slacker routine may have been done before, but certainly not like Joel and Ethan Coen do it. Insomuch as the duo would ever make something so straightforward as a “personal” film, “Inside Llewyn Davis” addresses the price a person can pay for trying to maintain the purity of their art. Llewyn decries the easy, the accessible and the crowd-pleasing, lamenting anyone who panders to these attributes as sell-outs or careerists.

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REVIEW: Trumbo

30 11 2015

TrumboThe potential criminalization of thought. The stoking of Americans’ fear of immigrants. The incessant blabbering that the media is infecting the world with its supposed invective.

No, that’s not the 2016 presidential campaign, it’s the late 1940s and early 1950s as depicted by Jay Roach in his new film “Trumbo.” But certain similarities inevitably come to light, of course. Fortunately for the team behind this project (but unfortunately for the world), the aftermath of the Paris attacks that occurred just a week after its theatrical release have only made this history lesson all the more pressing to revisit.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Communists were merely self-respecting left-wingers just slightly more extreme than the average Democrat. But once the Cold War began and the Soviet Union was no longer an ally, Communism was the primary menace to the security of the United States. A number of activists, such as Bryan Cranston’s screenwriting whiz Dalton Trumbo, were left to answer for a militaristic ideology they never intend to espouse.

The film shows, in heartbreaking detail, just how quickly the red panic overtook the country and instituted a reign of terror headed by Congress’ HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee). Worse of all, Hollywood became complacent in imprisoning and exiling talents like Trumbo. These self-fashioned patriotic moralists, led by John Wayne (David James Elliott) and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren), drove the industry to create its notorious “blacklist” of known communists that could never be hired again.

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REVIEW: The Gambler

23 12 2014

In Rupert Wyatt’s “The Gambler,” Mark Wahlberg plays Jim Bennett, an English professor by day and a high-stakes better by night.  When he gets himself into a tight situation with creditors coming to collect a big debt, Bennett resists help from his put-out mother (Jessica Lange) and a prodigious student (Brie Larson).  Instead, he responds by digging his hole deeper to vault himself out on an even larger scale.

Wahlberg plays the character with a vulnerability and self-deprecation when spitting out screenwriter William Monaghan’s rapid-fire dialogue.  Yet when his lips are still, Wahlberg imbues Bennett with a staggeringly ambivalent sense of hubris.  Viewing a week in his quickly disintegrating life is a strange experience because so much about him seems contradictory.

Bennett is best understood by not trying to understand him at all, simply watching and observing rather than identifying or analyzing.  Monaghan, working from a forty-year-old New Hollywood flick of the same name, harkens back to the era of the characterization’s conception.  Bennett exemplifies the ’70s-style impenetrable antihero, but Monaghan cleverly reassembles him for relevance in the time of TV’s current “difficult men” like Don Draper and Walter White.

Bennett cannot be explained by nor reduced to a few biographical details. Nothing indicates some massive familial implosion. His condition does not appear to have any psychological roots at all, in fact. Bennett has simply shed all illusions about life and convinced himself that the only game worth playing is one where the stakes are all or nothing.

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REVIEW: The Monuments Men

6 11 2014

The Monuments Men

On paper, “The Monuments Men” sounds like a movie that could be not only exciting entertainment but also great intellectual resonance.  The premise of the film, following a ragtag band of brothers assigned to save Europe’s greatest artworks from Hitler’s grasp, promises all the action of a World War II flick and a potent reminder of the vast importance of art.

Yet somewhere between the concept and the screen, George Clooney’s film takes its eye off the prize.  What he pulls together is rather disappointing given all the impressive elements at his disposal.  “The Monuments Men” is not necessarily a bad movie; it’s just a shockingly unsubstantial one.

Nothing really seems to propel the film forwards, leaving it suspended in a state of sustained mediocrity.  Though Clooney assembles quite the prestige cast, including Matt Damon, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, and Bill Murray, he rarely lets them play off each other as an ensemble.  From the outset, they split up in pairs on separate missions, inhibiting attachment and fracturing the narrative.

Obviously, a film steeped in history should try to model its narrative based on the actual events (although that rarely stops movies these days).  But there had to be some way for Clooney and co-writer Grant Heslov to spice up the script without deviating too far from the facts.

Honing the focus, like picking a central character to follow with dedication, might have been helpful.  “The Monuments Men” has no shortage of amusing supporting characters yet no driving leading force.  At times, the film just feels like a series of short films and amusing moments tied together into one bland, bloated two-hour feature.  C+ / 2stars


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REVIEW: Monsters University

7 08 2013

Monsters U“Monsters University” may not scale the emotional heights of Pixar’s most recent towering achievements “Up” and “Toy Story 3,” but that doesn’t mean the film isn’t moving, charming, or sweet in other ways.  It’s a movie that will be special and touching to anyone who has ever felt like an impostor or an underdog in their own life.  And for those big kids who have been to college themselves, it’s especially meaningful to anyone who has struggled to find their place on campus.

The film opens with a sight to make your heart melt – a tiny Mike Wazowski, the most adorable little nugget with big dreams to become a scarer at Monsters, Inc.  He’s got plenty of book smarts but lacks the intimidating frame to take the Scare Floor by storm.  Mike (Billy Crystal) meets quite the foil in a cocky young James P. “Sully” Sullivan (John Goodman), a dumb party animal who slacks off because he’s blessed with natural skill.  It’s a pretty standard nerd vs. jock dichotomy, in case you hadn’t already figured it out.

But the Pixar plot machine doesn’t have them battle in conventional ways.  Rather, after a big mistake lands them in hot water with Dean Hardscrabble (the ever-intimidating Helen Mirren), Mike and Sully are forced to team up to earn their stripes in the scare program.  They have to win the prestigious Greek Scare Cup to gain reentry into the class, leading them join up with a lovable band of misfits, Oozma Kappa.

The oddballs of Oozma Kappa, a fraternity house that’s also someone’s mom’s house, bring a lot of the vitality and humor to “Monsters University” that we don’t get in spades from seeing our old friends Mike and Sully (and Randall, who’s thrown in for good measure).  The novelty of these myriad new characters, however, does tend to overpower our reliable staples.  It’s still an enjoyable romp with astutely observed characters that offer very applicable life lessons for everyone.

And I think the fact that I’m currently in college led me to feel especially endeared to the film, which so accurately captured a key aspect of my own experience.  It’s easy to come into college expecting that we’re going to be one person, yet we so often find ourselves inexorably and immutably changed by unexpected people and events.  And thanks to Pixar’s great storytelling genius, they find a way to expand this valuable nugget of wisdom beyond the campus of Monsters University and into a larger reservoir of human experience.  B+ / 3stars


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REVIEW: The Hangover Part III

17 06 2013

Two summers ago, I expressed my frustration with the inertia of the “Hangover” franchise in my review for the carbon-copy sequel.  I wrote, “‘The Hangover Part II‘ is like breathing in airplane air.  Recycled, stale, but better than not having air to breathe at all.  In essence, it gives you exactly what you expected – and nothing more.”  Had I known yet another follow-up was in the pipelines, I would have begged the question, “Is it too much to ask for something different?”

In which case, I would never have been so unhappy to have a movie give me exactly what I asked of it.  “The Hangover Part III” is definitely not the same as its predecessors.  But lest we forget, change is not always good.  In this case, it’s just kind of depressing to see how fast and hard a comedic sensation can fall.  The series’ legacy will now likely be one of a studio that took a truly original concept, hackneyed it to the point of annoyance, and then besmirched its name entirely.

In fact, it’s hard to call “The Hangover Part III” much a comedy at all.  Sure, there’s the occasional clever quip, but the writers’ new plot structure forays the series into a new genre entirely.  It’s essentially a chase film, an action-thriller that squeezes out a laugh every once in a while.

The so-called “comedy” of this installment is lazy and, quite frankly, offensive.  The nuance of the original “Hangover” is long gone, replaced here by cheap gags that are above the most immature of middle schoolers.  All “The Hangover Part III” has to offer is homophobic humor, offering up gays as objects to be ridiculed.

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REVIEW: Flight

24 11 2012

Denzel Washington has wowed audiences by playing both sides of the hero-villain spectrum.  Just look at the two performances that earned him Oscars.  1989’s “Glory” saw him as an almost angelic soldier fighting in the first all-black company in the United States Army, while 2001’s “Training Day” had him as a cop so devious and corrupt you wanted to jump through the screen and put a bullet through his head.

In “Flight,” Washington plays in the shades of grey of Whip Whitaker, an alcoholic pilot who becomes a hero after steering his malfunctioning plane to safety with his unconventional wisdom.  The catch is that Whitaker was high on cocaine and drunk as a skunk when he did so.  Of course, the public blindly adores him in a way reminiscent of Sully, the pilot who landed his vessel in the Hudson River and had a memoir in Barnes & Noble faster than you could say “American Airlines.”  But Whitaker has plenty of baggage that he can’t come to grips with and can’t compress into one of the overhead bins.  (Sorry, the puns with “Flight” are just endless.)

Because it’s a Denzel Washington performance, it’s fascinating to watch.  He owns the screen with a commanding presence rivaled by few in cinema these days.  But because Washington has such well-known and well-defined extremes, it’s fairly easy to tell what he thinks of Whitaker.

While he may have the moments of tough, firm leadership that Coach Herman Boone exhibits, Whitaker is clearly more in the model of a Frank Lucas or an Alonzo Harris.  It’s impressive that Washington can convey meaning through the mere iconography of his stature; however, in a movie like “Flight” that depends on our shifting judgements of the protagonist, that strength becomes a liability.

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REVIEW: Argo

1 11 2012

Every year, one movie speaks to a sense of now.  Whether intentionally (“Up in the Air“) or unintentionally (“The Artist“), their messages resonate with current concerns and taps powerfully into the zeitgeist.

I highly doubt that any movie in 2012 comes along and captures that spirit better than “Argo,” and if it does … then I’ll have to upload a picture of myself with a foot in my mouth to my Facebook page.  Some of the similarities to the current times could not have been foreseen, and no one wanted to foresee the tragic loss of four Americans to an attack on an overseas embassy.

Regardless, it happened, and it makes sure the immaculately constructed and taut opening that depicts the siege of the embassy in Tehran is viewed through an entirely different lens.  We think not only of the people trying to escape a volatile 1979 Iran but also of Ambassador Steven and his slain colleagues.  The painful coexistence of the now with the then is deeply unsettling, and it sets the tone for a movie that entertainingly and thrillingly historicizes the contemporary.

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REVIEW: Trouble with the Curve

8 10 2012

Chances are you’ve already seen “Trouble with the Curve” … but you just don’t know it yet.

If you’ve seen “Gran Torino,” you’ve seen it.  Clint Eastwood is just doing a PG-13 version of his cranky, stubborn Walt Kowalski.  Don’t get me wrong, I still find that fairly entertaining though as I intend to pattern my 80-year-old willful disregarding of social conventions on him.  As aging Atlanta Braves scout Gus, he’s still got the ability to make curmudgeonly charming once again.

If you’ve seen “The Fighter,” you’ve seen it.  Amy Adams essentially does a dolled-up reprisal of her role as Charlene the MTV Girl, a tenacious sports groupie and strongly opinionated woman.  Here, she’s got some of those same qualities on display as Gus’ daughter Mickey, a baseball enthusiast looking to climb the corporate ladder but faces casual workplace misogyny.  She gets called onto the road to assist her ailing father, reawakening her love for the game.  Adams is a bright and fun presence on the screen, but it’s hardly of the caliber of performance David O. Russell got out of her.

If you’ve seen … really any Justin Timberlake movie, you’ve seen it.  Whether it’s “The Social Network,” “Bad Teacher,” or “Friends with Benefits,” it’s the same old schtick for the former N*Sync frontman.  It’s less Sean Parker-ish here, however, since the character doesn’t have nearly the dimensionality of an Aaron Sorkin creation.  Timberlake tackles the role of Johnny, a failed baseball player turned novice scout.  Gus has made, then broken, then made his career … and may have made his dreams with Mickey.

If you’ve seen “Moneyball,” you’ve seen this movie.  Even though “Trouble with the Curve”  is about the human calculations of baseball while Bennett Miller’s Best Picture nominee glorified computer models and statistics as the new great tool of baseball, both share an equal goal of bringing back a romanticism quickly disappearing from America’s pastime.

But strangely enough, “Moneyball” does a better job achieving this drawing parallels between computer pixels and the bright stadium lights.  “Trouble with the Curve,” clunking along at a leisurely pace it doesn’t earn (I mean seriously, it feels like an extra innings game), can only muster up cliches to show how much it loves baseball.  The game has seen better, and it deserves better.  C+ / 


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REVIEW: The Artist

9 01 2012

There’s more than just silence that makes “The Artist” a magical throwback to a bygone era.  Writer and director Michel Hazanavicius uses an old style to capture an old-fashioned mood of narrative simplicity and purity, and he executes it with such grace and elegance that it becomes absolutely irresistible.  However much ice your heart may have accumulated over the year, this movie is bound to – at least in a few moments if not in its entirety – melt some layers and make you feel moved like your grandparents did before the talkies came around.

If the sheer bliss of being transported back to a simpler era like Owen Wilson in “Midnight in Paris” (minus the reality check at the end) doesn’t get you, then the sheer charm of the movie is bound to make you weak at the knees.  Between the wonderfully emotional story, the jaunty score by Ludovic Bource, and the magnetic and charismatic performances of the lead actors, Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo, the undeniable heart of the movie will register with you on some deep, emotional level at least in fleeting moments.  For me, the “Waltz for Peppy” sequence is one of the most beautiful, touching scenes committed to film in recent memory, ranking in the pantheon with the postcards scene from “Benjamin Button” and the wedding sequence from “Up in the Air.”

You can’t refute the passionate love behind crafting “The Artist;” however, you may be able to resist falling passionately in love with it.  The movie’s simplicity and breeziness, while a main component in making sure the film’s silent strategy works, also leaves a bit of longing for something more.  While there are moments where Hazanavicius exhibits a Charlie Kaufman-esque flair for the meta, overall, the movie lacks a great spark of originality in its plot.  At times, it settles for clever homages to movies like “Singing in the Rain” and loving winks to classics like “Vertigo” where it could have forged its own trail.

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