If Beale Street Could Talk: A Follow-Up To Moonlight That Doesn't Disappoint

A sophomore effort after your first movie is released to critical and audience success is always going to be difficult. When you've already set the bar so high for yourself, your next movie's anticipation is always going to be much higher than you're probably going to be able to deliver. We were all stunned when Jordan Peele gave us the phenomenal Get Out - and the dude won an Oscar for it. His next horror movie, coming out in March, is inevitably, in some way or another, going to let everyone down because no matter how good the movie is (and it will be great), it won't be as good as Get Out. Similarly, Barry Jenkins had an uphill climb with his second effort. After winning for Best Picture with the extraordinary Moonlight, his follow-up movie, while very good, doesn't really touch the heights that Moonlight reached. However, If Beale Street Could Talk is a near-perfect adaptation of James Baldwin's novel, and it shows us that even though he started so high, Barry Jenkins is here and he's making/made a name for himself among the Hollywood giants. 

If Beale Street Could Talk tells the tale of two lovers who have been friends since they were kids. Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) and their newfound love/relationship. They'd always been friends, but now Tish at 19 and Fonny at 22, have discovered each other. Their relationship blossoms and they fall madly in love. They look for a place to buy together. They look to get married and start a family. However, all of this is told to us throughout the movie in flashbacks. This is because in the present day - Tish is pregnant and Fonny is in prison. Fonny is behind bars for a crime he didn't commit and Tish, her family, and Fonny's family are working to get Fonny out. But, it's not cheap. As the movie points out - it's really easy for a white cop to arrest and accuse an innocent black man, but in order to prove innocence, the system expects them to pay for everything. They have to hire a lawyer, investigators, etc. The money piles up, even with both families working to pay for Fonny's lawyer's services. Meanwhile, Tish, who isn't even 20, is struggling with revealing her pregnancy to the family. Her family is much more accepting than Fonny's, whose mother is devoutly and hellaciously religious. It's beautiful and painful what Barry Jenkins has done with the movie - show us this remarkable relationship grow between two very lovely people, while showing us how, for people of color, it can be ripped away from them in an instant and the system is rigged for "escape" to be impossible. 

Tish narrates her pain throughout the movie as innocent a soul as the character she is. She's still naive and full of hope, but her hope is stifled by her environment. She explains why it's rare for the people of Harlem to get any leg up in the world and why this sort of thing happens all the time and even though it's agonizing for her and her family to go through - it's not surprising. There's a scene in the film that's difficult to swallow where Tish is in the grocery store and is being harrassed by a white man. As she ignores him and tries to get away, Fonny shows up and runs the guy out of the store - in front of a white cop. Fonny immediately pumps the brakes as the cop steps to him and asks what happened. When they explain the situation to him, the cop immediately tries to throw Fonny in handcuffs for assault. It's only when the store owner backs up their story as the truth that the cop, very hesitantly, lets Fonny go. The cop threatens to see them again - and wouldn't you know it, has some direct involvement with Fonny's arrest later that lands him in prison for something he didn't do. It's hard watching realities that we, ourselves (especially me, a privileged white male) have never experienced, but are very real and occur often to so many people. When Tish and Fonny's fathers turn to petty crime in order to pay for the legal fees - we get it. Tish even tells us in her narration that most of the men in Harlem end up turning to crime because when society constantly tells them they're nothing and can't ever achieve success - they start to believe it. These are the harsh truths Jenkins exposes in the film. 

The thing that Jenkins does well - and he did it in Moonlight also - is he's able to make his writing sound unique. The movie feels like a novel. It doesn't feel like an adaptation of a novel to the screen - it feels like a novel. There's long, slow conversations. There's lingering on Tish and Fonny for steady periods without a word uttered. The dialogue isn't natural, but literary (yet, feels authentic for these characters). Jenkins is able to bring to the screen the images of the book you see in your mind when you read. That is no easy feat. He's also not there to make his audience comfortable. He doesn't want to ease your own anxiety when something in the film gets "too real" or too uncomfortable. Jenkins lingers on a shot longer that most would in order for the viewer to get squirmy and shifty. Because this isn't a comfortable story to tell. And he doesn't want you to feel safe either. He wants that pit in your stomach to feel worse and worse and never really dissipate, even when the movie is over. 

The cast of the film is brilliant. Layne and James are perfectly cast and are marked with instant chemistry. They're supposed to have known each other since they were kids, and it feels like that right away. They're supposed to be more in love than any two people have ever been in love... and it feels like that right away. James carries with him an anger, one that's easily set off, but is able to quickly calm and resolve it just by seeing Tish's innocent face. Layne plays Tish with a calm and sincere naivete that breaks your heart with every look she makes. Regina King plays Tish's mother. She's magnificent. She should be in all the movies and win all the awards forever. She brings such a fierceness to the role with a underlying vulnerability that it only amplifies the heartbreak of the film. She's already won a Golden Globe for the role, and it wouldn't be surprising to see her take home a long-overdue Oscar. If Beale Street Could Talk may not have as deeply piercing an effect as Moonlight did, but Barry Jenkins still brings it with his follow-up movie. And like Moonlight, it's not an easy or a comfortable watch, but it's a necessary watch. Because Jenkins has a way of flinging harsh truth in a beautiful and touching way that not many directors before him have been able to. 

B+

Bumblebee: A Harmless Jaunt That Became A Delightful Romp

The Transformers franchise is five movies deep and littered with stupidity. How these films still have a fanbase is actually quite bewildering. While no one actually expected anything out of the first film, it did show that it had enough behind it to tell an entertaining story (albeit a story littered with misogyny and toxic masculinity). The charm of Shia LeBouf and then newcomer Megan Fox was enough to give the fans something to cheer for. However, (I assume) self-proclaimed alpha male Michael Bay kept churning out movies that proved to be more garbage piled on more sticky, sludge-covered garbage. As the movies got worse, Bay amped up the sexism, the absurdity, the loud in-your-face CGI, and even managed to slip in some not-so-subtle racial stereotyping in the mix. Finally, after three movies, he decided to revamp - with other not-as-alpha-male-as-Michael-Bay-but-kinda-also-pretty-close-alpha-male Mark Whalberg to the mix. These movies, while not as all-phobic as the previous entries, were pretty high on the nonsense factor. Until finally, even they wore out their welcome (while still making truckloads of money). So, instead of putting the franchise to rest (which is what it should've done years ago, but Hollywood never does), they decided to go with a spinoff/prequel involving the beloved Transformer Bumblebee. However, what they DID do correctly, was take the reigns away from I-shit-in-your-pie-alpha-dawg Michael Bay, and gave the film to a skilled *cough* FEMALE *cough* writer and a *cough* COMPETENT *cough* director in order to give us something we haven't seen before - a Transformers film that's actually pretty decent.

Trust me, I had no desire to see Bumblebee when I first heard about it. Even after seeing the trailer, I still had no intention on seeing the film. But, as I've done before - when I was plumb-shocked after seeing the Rotten Tomatoes score of 93% (the same critics who've been given sub-20% ratings to the other entries), my curiosity got the better of me. Set in 1987, Bumblebee tells the tale of, well, the Transformer Bumblebee who comes to our planet after his own planet, Cybertron, has fallen to the Decepticons. He's there to scope out the planet and make sure it's safe for the rest of the Transformers to come hide out after Optimus Prime has wrangled all the survivors together. The movie begins like your typical Transformers movie, with the loud CGI-riddled fights, and it appears to be another stale entry into the franchise. But then we move over to our human character - Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), an 18-year-old who has lost her father and is working a shitty job on the boardwalk in order to afford a car. She finds Bumblebee (disguised as an old VW bug) in her Uncle's scrap yard and he gives her the car as a birthday gift. She soon finds out her car - ain't exactly a car. The two of them form a bond - a bond she hasn't had with anyone since her dad passed, and together they must stop a couple of rogue Decepticons out to kill Bee and destroy Earth, as well as some soldiers led by John Cena out to kill Bee as well.

While it may sound like your run-of-the-mill Transformers flick, this movie actually has what the others don't - layers. Layers to the story. Layers to the characters. Things organically happen. Relationships are forged deep within the characters, other than surface-level ones that happen because the script says they should. There is deep care spent by writer Christina Hodson in her characters to make them three-dimensional and human. While the other *cough* white male *cough* writers of the series are trying to cram as many boom-boom explosions into the script as well as shots of asses in very short shorts - Hodson wants us to get to love the characters. And we do. Charlie is dealing with some very real demons. She's become hostile toward her family, closed-off in her personal life, stopped taking risks and seeking dreams because her life was shattered with her father's death and her grief hasn't subsided as quickly as the rest of her family's - especially her mother's, who has already started dating again. With Bee she starts to let down her guard and start to live again and see the excitement of life she once had. The movie plays out less like a sci-fi action film and more like The Iron Giant and E.T. There's a serious Amblin-Spielberg feel to this movie, which is a welcome return to form as many movies have lost that heart they once had.

After directing the very wonderful Kubo and the Two Strings and being an animator on The Boxtrolls, ParaNorman, and Coraline, Travis Knight's storytelling pairs well with Hodson's in knowing it's about the story and the characters that drive a good movie - not one that will make money on name and starpower alone (something all the previous Transformers never bothered to take into consideration). And while the movie does still have it's jumpy, loud, action-y scenes... they fit better into the movie because they're organic, and less frequent. The cast has a great chemistry, and even John Cena who hams it up to John Cena levels, isn't taking himself very seriously. It's more of a coming-of-age movie than it is an action movie. It has action. It has sci-fi elements. But that's not what makes the movie good. Hollywood doesn't understand that it doesn't take much to have that little extra effort put into character and story, but when it all comes together like this - you can have your big tentpole movie that people actually walk out of the theater having enjoyed. Sure, the movie has its flaws - some of the dialogue is on the hokey side and there's a few eye-rolling moments of cheese, but compared to the rest of the franchise, it's Citizen freakin' Kane.

Whether you're a Transformers fan or not (I can't imagine they were many left), there is something here. Bumblebee is actually a really good movie to bring the family to. The kids will enjoy it as much as the parents, but probably for different reasons. It's fun, it's funny, it's got heart and warmth and it's pretty much the antithesis of every Transformers movie before it. Michael Bay says he doesn't think he's actually done with the franchise, but decided to step back for this one. If the reviews for Bumblebee are any indication to the studios, they shouldn't just persuade him to back out for good, they should forcibly push him out. Because if Bumblebee is a preview of the quality of movie this franchise can achieve and go from here, then there may still be life out there for these shitty robots after all.

B-

Aquaman: Khal Me By Your Name

--Written as a Facebook rant allowed to be posted as a review by Guest Reviewer Jason Booth

So check it my people.

My wife and I snuck away to a movie theater and decided for some unfathomable reason to see Aquaman, and these are all the reasons that it was one of the dumbest movies I have ever seen.

First of all, let me just say that we considered a lot of other movies. Vice and Mary Poppins Returns and The Favourite and a couple of other solid choices streamed across our conversational reasoning earlier that afternoon.

Aquaman. 64% on RottenTomatoes. NPR says it's very dumb, but apparently that Game of Thrones' swashbuckler Jason Momoa has a lot of fun in the lead role or something. Sounds like a fun way to relax for a couple of hours, eh fellow new parent? Thor: Ragnarok was fun, right? We enjoyed that one, yes? The Little Mermaid as a live action movie where Ariel just kicks a lot more ass? Eh? Ehhh???

And so, after the hip new restaurant with the Mezcal Cocktails featuring an overwhelmingly confident use of the color mauve in the color scheme, we find ourselves firmly planted in the middle of the XD theater in our carefully pre-selected seats. The theater is only a fifth full, although the bag of sour candy that we've brought with us is bursting at the seams. All these years later and, while the security has improved somewhat, I could still sneak a fucking Shetland Pony into most major American movie houses and those teenage employees wouldn't even cock an under-tweezed brow.

The movie starts out with a skosh of promise. Khal Drogo is fighting some underwater submarine pirates, or, something like that. He doesn't know he's Water Boy yet... or like, he does, but he's pissed at underwater people because they killed his CGI mom, Nicole Kidman, who looks like she's 22 because I dunno. Who cares? It's an action flick! Anyway, it's not the worst thing ever yet. But then very quickly, Water Boy is brought back down to the surface because the water people have decided to wage war on the topsiders (that's us), and they do this by throwing all of our boats back onto our shores and beaches.

TSUNAMI ATTACK! Or... INTENSE LITTERING AND POLLUTION!

But STUPID! JOKES ON YOU SEA PEOPLE! Do they have any idea how many ships we'd lost in the ocean and you just gave it all back to us? Thanks for all the lost treasure you idiots.

Anyway, that was an aside. The movie just keeps getting worse. There is a giant Tron showdown where AquaFellow battles his younger pureblood brother and, don't worry, there is DEFINITELY a humongous Octopus drummer that plays at the battle because it's like a sporting event. You know, like in Ragnarok, but way less interesting and with no Jeff Goldblum to make things quirky-fun. Okay, so, underwater sea people can swim at the speed of fifteen Phelps, and yet, for some reason, they drive around in sea cars and ride on giant sharks and seahorses who literally can't swim faster than they can. There is this one scene where Wet Dude and his new sea princess girlfriend (Amber Heard), Discount Black Widow, are about to crash into a crater of underwater lava as they're escaping the Lost City, and, at the last second, they eject from their sea car (because duh, it's the LX and the LX totally comes with underwater ejection feature, thanks Subaru), and then, just as the car crashes into the lava, they just swim away. Because, oh yeah, they were able to swim this entire time and like, way faster than the car they were just in. This happens over and over again in this film. There are constant ledges and lava pits and things people can fall into, even though, as they show us time and time again, they can all just, ya know, swim away and stuff.

Patrick Wilson is the bad fish guy, which is weird because I thought he was Nite Owl, and Willem Dafoe is also there, and he's like, a secret mentor/good fish guy, but that's also strange because I thought he was the Green Goblin. So basically this is the movie where heroes from slightly better movies trade sides--which I believe is also a perfect example of just how complicated Maritime Law actually can be. Amber Heard is a crappy, red-headed ninja princess. Dolph Lundgren is in the movie and he just looks so tired. It doesn't matter how many Just For Men Red Beard Dye boxes they use on him--he is withering away under that ocean and I really think he should just go back into retirement now. Most of the movie is spent meeting relatively shitty looking Mer-people and various underwater creatures, as if George Lucas was just left alone for a summer to make the fourth prequel that he was never allowed to make, and then they just stole all the characters from some even shittier Gungan island colony that we never asked him to envision.

In the end, do you know why Aquaman wins? Well, it isn't JUST that marvelous hair that flows through the water like a never-ending L'Oreal commercial. You see, he goes on a quest to find a magical Trident--the most powerful trident because it was forged by, I dunno, someone important. Once again, we're talking discount Thor and 99 Cents Store Mjolnir here. Most of the storytelling felt lazier than my inability to look up how to insert an umlaut over that previous spelling of 'Mjolnir'.
Oceanic Hombre eventually finds his Disney spear and now Ursula Nite Owl better watch out! Big random war at the end between the bad mer-people and the good mer-people to decide if they'll go to war with the surface people and in the meantime, all these people on the surface are just standing around like, "What the hell happened to all of our boats? What is going on exactly?" Because no one ever went back to tell them that there was an underwater rager that would eventually decide the fate of humanity going down.

Whatevs.

 The Goodfish Golden Triton Boy beats evil Hard Candy Nite Owl Patrick Wilson on a big surface just out of the water (because he's weaker there or something). Oh also, there was a scene earlier in the film where they met Good Green Goblin to talk and he gave them a treasure chest and they all spoke in an air bubble because some mer-people wouldn't be able to visit a space like that without special suits--OH SHIT HERE ARE SOME ATLANTIC NAVY SEALS WITH SPECIAL SUITS!
That type of stuff fills a good amount of the movie. Water physics that don't quite work. Mer-people and regular people that seem to basically be able to go everywhere. Don't worry what your lungs do--there is a suit to fit your needs, I promise.

But don't worry, Water Dude still talks to whales with his forehead. That still happens.

CGI Nicole Kidman gets to go back to her New Zealand All Blacks Rugby Captain of a lighthouse keeper husband, who never gave up hope that his supernatural underwater wife would return to the broken home she left behind to visit her alcoholic, wharf-dive-bar of a child. And now Khal Drogo finally has his own khalasar, all these years later. Awwwwwwquaman.

Sea Minus

Welcome To Marwen: A Disjointed Affair

Robert Zemeckis is a director who always pushes boundaries. Whether it be technology or what we're used to seeing in film, he's always pushing to show his audiences something they've never seen before. He's responsible for the Delorean time machine in Back to the Future. He's responsible for pairing a 1930s detective up with a cartoon rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He blew a giant hole through Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her. He got Tom Hanks two acting noms with Forrest Gump and Castaway. He blew us all away with what he did with motion capture for Beowulf, The Polar Express, and A Christmas Carol. So it makes sense that he would be drawn to a story where a man's inner emotional pain is expressed and presented through the lives of an art instillation of dolls from WWII. Welcome to Marwen is based off the 2010 documentary Marwencol and I can definitely see what Zemeckis was TRYING to do with the film, the end result winds up being a near colossal miss. 

Steve Carell (who is making his dramatic rounds this year) plays Mark Hogencamp, a man who was beaten within an inch of his life for exposing the fact that he likes to wear women's shoes to five redneck/neo-nazis at a bar. They beat him so badly he can't write his own name or remember much of who he was before the attack. Who he was, was an artist. A pretty good one. So, because he can't draw anymore, Mark has turned to pictures. He's built a small replica of a WWII Belgian town, which he's named "Marwen". There, he's created a doll of himself as an American fighter pilot named Hoagie. The rest of the city is populated by women - all based off women in his life. They're under constant attack by the same five Nazis, defeating them every time. The film mostly sticks with the actions of the dolls, but when we're out of the imaginationland of Marwen, we're with Mark and his new neighbor Nicol (Leslie Mann) and their budding relationship. All the while the sentencing of Mark's attackers is a few days away and Mark is trying to decide whether or not he'll show up to face them.

The movie is a weird series of disjointed events that never really seem to connect with one another on a logial (or even symbolic) level. We realize immediately that Marwen and the dolls are Mark's coping mechanism. The five Nazis in Marwen represent the five men who beat Mark nearly to death. He's able to exact his bloody revenge on them over and over and over again in order to make himself feel better for a brief moment after these men have basically taken away everything Mark ever was. He's afraid of everything in the real world and never wants to face any sort of conflict, so the women represent his strength. They're the ones who are strong. They're the ones who help Hoagie defeat the Nazis every time. They keep Mark strong in the face of any adversity. Finally, there's the Belgian witch of Marwen who, with a magical glove, decides the fate of Hoagie and the women - this represents Mark's addiction to painkillers and his loneliness. See, the witch won't let Hoagie fall in love with any woman. Every time a woman gets close, the witch vanquishes her, therefore Hoagie/Mark must constantly be alone. These moments are intercut with Mark's life, but never really say much more than that on repeat. After the first two or three Marwen scenes, we understand the metaphor, but it doesn't give us much else. In fact, it stays in Marwen so long, repeating the same information so much... we lose sight of the story we're there to see - the story of Mark.

I think it was a lot of fun watching Mark's dolls enact his plots of revenge and get to see Mark's inner child/wild side come out - but I was more interested in Mark as a person. I wanted to see his recovery and how he pushed himself back up from near death (something that's only shown in a brief 20-second flashback). I want to know where he got the idea for Marwen, who the first doll Wendy was (Marwen is a combination of Mark and Wendy and we only get brief, cryptic hints of her existence), how Mark wound up addicted to pain pills, how Mark beat his addiction (something the movie shows us through the characters of Marwen, but never bothers to tell us how he REALLY did it), what the sentencing was of his attackers, etc. Yes, I realize that there is a documentary that answers all these questions, but Zemeckis treats Welcome to Marwen like we've all seen the documentary. Before writing this, I went and read about Mark Hogencamp, and I'll tell you that this man is far more interesting than what we're given in this film. If you're going to make a feature film based off a documentary, yes please take some artistic license, but don't forget who and what it is you're there to tell us about. Welcome to Marwen gets so bogged down in its CGI world, it forgets to tell us about the man entirely. The only thing it did was make me want to track down the doc.

The women of Marwen are fascinating and it's wonderful to see how Mark was essentially saved by the women in his life, but what the film does (again, because it spends too much time away from reality) is forget to show us these women in real life and the real impact they have on Mark's ACTUAL life. One of the dolls is based off a woman who brings him his medicine once a month. The only thing we learn about her is that she has a Russian accent. Janelle Monae pops up in a flashback as his physical therapist. She has about a twenty second scene and is severely underutilized for the rest of the movie. There's Carlala (Eiza Gonzalez) who works with Mark at the bar, Roberta (Merritt Wever) a kind woman who works at the hobby shop, Suzette who is based off of Mark's favorite porn star, and they all feel underdeveloped. This, again, is only because Zemeckis is more interested in showing us the extended metaphor of the dolls in action, rather than spend time with them in the real world. The only one who gets the bulk of the screen time is Nicol. However, Mark, who often finds delusion in Marwen, and confuses the characters in his artwork with the people in his life, almost makes the relationship between him and Nicol uncomfortable. A few of their scenes are almost cringe-worthy - yes, it's intentional, but it doesn't give me more insight into Nicol. However, everyone in it is exceptional for the limited screen time they're given. Steve Carell is a fantastic actor, I just wish he'd been given more to do than act out his fantasy scenarios every time a little bit of conflict arises for Mark.

The movie has been thrashed by critics and, while I understand their complaints, the film isn't nearly as bad as they say it is. It's also severely underperformed at the box office, so far making only 5 million of its 40 million dollar budget, leading to it being one of the biggest busts of the year. The film was destined to fail, however. It's one of these movies released during the holiday season that looks like it's full of hope, but no one really wants to watch a story about a man who was severely beaten for their Christmas movie. When the critics panned the film, which would've been the movie's only saving grace, it was DOA. It may find a little life when it comes out On Demand, just because Carell still has the starpower to reel in viewers. But honestly, I'd say the movie is nothing more than artistic fluff that doesn't do the story of the man real justice. It's entertaining to watch, but it raises more questions about Mark than it answers. If you want to know the real story, my recommendation is to check out the documentary because it sounds a lot more fascinating than the story presented in Welcome to Marwen.

C

Vice: Cheyn Of Ghouls

--Written by Guest Reviewer Kyle Delaney

It's September 11th, 2001. The scene is the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, an apocalypse-proof bunker untold stories beneath the White House. Alarm sirens are blaring. The confused cross-talk is maddeningly cacophonous. Televisions are cycling through horrific scenes. The second plane has already slammed into the South Tower. No, now the South Tower has fallen. The room is full of ice chewing psychopaths in their own right who've figuratively, or perhaps literally, stabbed colleagues and friends to reach the heights of power they now occupy. One-by-one they're losing their shit over something called the Rules of Engagement before ultimately, inevitably, gladly turning toward and conceding their authority to a stoic sixty-year-old with the physical appearance of the Penguin and the gravelly snarl of Christian Bale's Batman who resolutely, almost pleasantly, decides it's chill to shoot down passenger jets full of innocent people in American airspace. This is the bloodless demeanor of a man who is doing 9/11 and knows he's doing 9/11 well.

It's also your formal introduction to the titular protagonist of Adam McKay's Vice, then-Vice President Dick Cheney (Christian Bale, who is looking cut and sexy as hell throughout the film). Over the next two-plus hours, as we navigate his multi-decade ascent from Midwestern chud hell-bent on setting the world record for DUIs accrued over one human lifespan into his more recognizable form as supreme architect and prime mover of disastrous policies during the worst presidency in American history, we become accustomed to watching him bowl over careerist bureaucrats for whom cabinet appointments, advisory gigs or elected office are but the natural culmination of a life's hard work and dedicated service. Each of them are eventually hamstrung in their quest for influence by some limitation or another: fear of responsibility, fear of failure, fear of being remembered by history as a war criminal. This is the vacuum into which Dick Cheney steps time and time again in a pursuit of power so classic and timeless it'd almost be charming were it not for the horrors it ultimately precipitates, images of which flash across the screen in a timely manner like fits of shared PTSD from our repressed national memory.

With Vice, McKay has essentially conjured Shakespeare's Macbeth, calibrated for a society that thinks reading Shakespeare is lame as shit (an acknowledgement that's made explicit when Dick and Lynne Cheney share a steamy Elizabethan dialogue during one of the many comedic breaks McKay employs to shake the narrative from the moldy spell of the modern biopic). The film is largely successful as political critique because it sticks to established fact and eschews the customary, rote partisan rhetoric of our cursed time in favor of grander themes, thus operating on a frequency many Americans will perceive as apolitical. McKay plays the hits, to be sure, but he doesn't take any cheap shots and, if anything, is unnecessarily gracious in his retelling of events. The players, known and notorious as they may be, are fairly rendered here. Sam Rockwell's portrayal of George W. Bush, especially, strays from popular convention, depicting not so much the big-eared hopeless buffoon of our popular imagination (or the film's trailer), but rather a failson fuckup whose daddy issues are leveraged against his judgement by a more bloodthirsty and profit-hungry inner circle. In the film's most impactful moment, he addresses the American people as Baghdad is carpet bombed. His leg shakes beneath his desk, presumably grasping the godlike capacity of his office and, unlike his Vice, shying from its implications.

For his part, Cheney arrives at his political awakening not by reading books or position papers, but instead by identifying with what can only be considered a 1970s variant strain of big dick energy exuded by then congressional representative Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell, who by film's end is truly unrecognizable beneath some stellar makeup work). In a subsequent scene deliberating the ethics of vaporizing poor brown rice farmers half a world away, he asks his mentor, "What, exactly, do we believe?" Rumsfeld responds by laughing in his damn face. The message is clear: the power is the point, who dies or why shall remain to be determined. The most telling scene in the film comes shortly thereafter when Cheney is upgraded to a windowless office in the bowels of Nixon's West Wing and is overcome by emotion immediately recognizable as the same one exhibited by every guy who ever clawed his way to a GED and then washed out of society before being issued a badge and a gun by his local municipal government at age thirty. It's his first taste of pride, and power, and authority. And all at once. A single sip is just not gonna suffice. The career trajectory of the 21st century's own Dr. Strangelove is henceforth cast.

Vice is McKay's second crack at litigating the weighty hellscape of the aughts, following on the heels of 2016's The Big Short - a solid and enjoyable flick about how some Wall Street dipshits deserve to profit off the immiseration of regular schumcks like you and I, while others do not. His latest effort to make a dishwater-ass-looking motherfucker like Dick Cheney a compelling figure features many of the same bells and whistles he employed to make default swaps and derivatives intelligible to people with 620 credit scores. Clever narrative techniques, tangential and oft-comical asides serving to 'splain the more technical plot points or character motivations. It's all here, and the results are pretty decidedly mixed. Where The Big Short introduced a steady stream of soliloquies and celebrity cameos intended to demystify complex financial instruments, the devices employed in Vice are less frequent, conducted more haphazardly, and are absent of any common motif. For every successful gag - such as the fake credits that roll before the fateful third act - there are one or two mini-lectures on some element of unitary executive theory that come across as unfocused and flat. Given how much simpler comedic undertakings - repeatedly trolling the liberal audience by having Cheney suffer something like 20 heart attacks over the movie's runtime, for instance - achieve the same disarming effect, it's difficult to say whether the hits are worth the misses in this regard.

Despite the unnecessary gimmicks, the at times overly expository narration, and the frenetic pacing that manages to muddle what should be a simple and direct extrapolation from the Bush and Cheney years to our cruel and unusual present, the writing is ultimately too good and the cast too talented not to win over the viewer. All reservations are eventually diffused, if only through attrition. And that's right when McKay yanks the lure. Feeling warm and fuzzy watching Cheney console his daughter after she confides to her parents that's she's gay? Think at his core the old bastard's actually an alright guy for sticking by her even as Bush pushed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage? Cool, because after that you get to watch him sell her out for maybe the most inconsequential gain in American electoral politics: a fucking WYOMING HOUSE SEAT! You then watch as Iraq unravels and descends into sectarian bloodshed and pointless violence. Cheney covers his ass by shitcanning his sensei as he cowers on the phone in an unmarked Pentagon storage closet. He almost dies from yet another heart scare. At his lowest point, he's lustily booed by a stadium full of Nationals fans. He's collecting L's at a breakneck pace and you've turned on him even before he confirms to Martha Radditz that yes, the wanton violence and torture and kidnapping and chaos unleashed on an undeserving and innocent people was worth it. You're booing him, yourself. You're throwing your popcorn. Fuck, this guy really sucks!!

Cheney then turns left from the interview chair, breaks the fourth wall, and in a style that's too Frank Underwood not to notice or be creeped out by, implicates the viewer for what has, until this, the closing moments of the film, indeed felt conspicuously absent: their complicity. Almost nothing in Vice conveys the kind of gnashing vitriol and desire for blind, broad-scale vengeance that was ubiquitous in the wake of September 11th. We've been allowed to forget, to convince ourselves it never happened or, even if it did, at least it wasn't us. That is until Cheney, in an invigorated growl that lands like a clean right hand on our outstretched chins, reminds us of the painful truth that we chose him (twice, actually!) It's jarring and terrifying. Yet, when he continues on about how easy it is to judge him now, how the evil people who want to do us harm are still out there, and how he doesn't regret for one second taking every step necessary to keep American families safe, you kind of start to lose him. The words, and even by this point, the conviction with which they're recited are as familiar as any psalm you've heard a hundred times or more. But you also know the score. And you wonder whether killing another million women and children will finally make us safe?

George HW Bush once said that 9/11 made Dick Cheney crazy, just pushed him off the deep end. And maybe it did. It would certainly be the most relatable and humanizing thing about him. For his many faults, Cheney is at least on the record, which is more than can be said for you or I or our uncles who, in 2005, definitely said we should just nuke Fallujah and Mosul, but denies it now. To borrow a phrase: Dick Cheney didn't change, the times did. We did. By electing in 2008 the one candidate who was too young to have been able to vote for the Iraq War, and 8 years later Cheney's conflict had definitely not expanded into Libya, and Syria, and Yemen. Vice reminds us what Americans are capable of when we come together as one nation, portraying something deeper and more damning than we expect at the box office window.

B

Bird Box: Like "The Happening", But Like... You Know... Competent

Bird Box has been on Netflix for less than a week and I already feel like I'm late to this party. Clearly, what I'm taking away from my viewing last night is that someone watched The Happening, realized it was a sewage burrito wrapped up in a stale carcass and decided to re-do it with some competence. I hadn't actually seen anything on the film advertised (which is the downside of movies on Netflix), but it generated some buzz early and the starpower of Sandra Bullock has helped it take off to become Netflix's most popular film of probably the entire year (I'm just guessing - research would have to be involved, and I'm feeling particularly lazy today). Netflix has been churning out original content so much that it's hard to gauge what to spend your time on and what to skip, but at least for this film, a film that would've done very well in theaters I imagine, it's certainly worth your time.

Much like The Happening starts, Bird Box tells the tale of some weird global epidemic where people are committing mass suicide. It starts in Europe and then makes its way over to us. Sandra Bullock plays Mallorie, a pregnant, reclusive artist living in the Bay area of California. Her sister (Sarah Paulson) is her only connection to the outside world. Mallorie is pregnant, but her dude has left her and she's not exactly excited about the prospect of being a mother. She feels she won't have that motherly instinct of connecting immediately with her child. After a checkup at the hospital, the attack begins. This time, it's not "the trees" exterminating mankind, but it's some sort of unseen monster or monsters that if you look at them, your eyes glaze over in an eerie crimson and you off yourself without hesitation. Mallorie barely survives and holes up in a house with other random survivors who include John Malkovich, Trevante Rhodes, Lil Rel Howery, BD Wong, and Jacki Weaver. The film goes back and forth between the house of volatile survivors and five years in the future when Mallorie is on her own traversing a river with two blindfolded children trying to make it to an alleged safe haven.

While the movie isn't perfect, it's certainly a hell of a lot better than The Happening. While both films begin with an intriguing premise, it's Bird Box that actually delivers on the premise. The two biggest differences here are tension (of which The Happening had none) and actual three-dimensional characters (which, again, The Happening sorely lacked  - seriously, Mark Wahlberg was a science teacher??). Both movies saw an unseen force affecting the minds of ordinary citizens and forcing them to kill themselves, but Bird Box succeeds in upping the tension because there is an actual visual force that is doing this to people. We only get glimpses of it in shadow or in drawings, but the fact that there is a malicious creature out there doing this makes the film even that more suspenseful and terrifying. And we get to figure out the rules of the creatures along with the characters to add to the fear and excitement. How much of the creatures do you have to see in order to become affected? Do the creatures know how to cut the power? Do they enter houses? Can you look at them on a video? Will they attack you inside of a car? Figuring out the rules of these things along with our characters lends to most of the terror of the movie. The other side of that is when Mallorie is alone with the kids. They're blindfolded 90% of the time we know them and they're trying to go down a river without being able to see. We hear forces around them, we know how kids don't necessarily listen to adult figures and don't necessarily understand the gravity of certain situations. So, the tension here is upped even further.

Then there's the characters. Kudos to director Susanne Bier for making a movie with probably the most diverse cast of the year. The house is mostly female. There's the old, racist white dude. The kind black man. The funny black man. The Latina cop. The gay Asian. Like, this movie has diversity COVERED. And they're all pretty well-rounded. Sure, Bier spends most of her time with Mallorie, but we get insight into each person and they're not just defined by their occupation or their interests or their pasts or their sexualities. They're genuine people who, if this situation actually occurred, you could find yourself in a house with. As always, Bullock is phenomenal. She's ice cold toward her children, who she only calls Boy and Girl because, as we see from her past, we're not sure if she actually couldn't make a connection with them, or if she loves them so much she knows what could happen to them in an instant, and doesn't want to make a connection for fear of losing them. Rhodes of Moonlight fame delivers here as well, showing the makings of a superstar he's destined to become. Malkovich plays slimy just as he always has - with a grin on his face and black in his heart. He's always fun to watch playing an evil curmudgeon. The rest of the cast is put together nicely to really make this movie FEEL theatrical, even though we all watched it at home on our TV screens.

Bird Box has its flaws as well. While we do get to discover the rules along with the rest of the characters, there are still a lot of questions leftover. The biggest one is why the creatures don't enter houses? Why are there some people who can look at them and be affected in a homicidal way instead of a suicidal way? Who gets what outcome? And my biggest gripe with the film I'll put below in a SPOILER section in case those of you who haven't seen it are waiting for my go-ahead. As for that, it's definitely worth watching. It's suspenseful, entertaining, and pretty scary throughout without resorting to jump scares and letting the ambiance of the situation take charge. It's got a little bit of the good from A Quiet Place and none of the bad from The Happening to make a worthwhile night at home at the movies. Spoilers below.





SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET. DON'T LOOK PAST THIS. 







Okay, so I think my biggest complaint about the film is the fact that it continuously switches timelines throughout the movie and doesn't give the audience a reason for the transitions like something unexpected. We get scenes when she's in the house with everyone and five years later alone with the kids. In our brains we know that most, if not all, have probably died, we just don't know how. But usually when something is set up like that, it's to subvert the audience's expectations and give us something UNexpected. This didn't happen. Everyone except Tom dies in the house. Five years later, Tom is with Mallorie and the kids at the cabin. But we know he's not with her when she's in the boat... so what happens to him? Does he stay back to protect them and magically show up at the end? What's the ace up the sleeve?

The answer is nothing. He just saves them and kills himself exactly as we thought happened to him when we realized five years later she was alone. So, the point of the jumping back and forth between the years was what exactly? How was the movie elevated by telling it this way rather than chronologically? It's really the only thing that bugged me. I was very much entertained by the rest.

B

The Favourite: Dark, Cunning, And Hilarious

For most of my readers, including myself, I'm willing to guess that The Favourite hasn't hit your radar or it has and it's been dismissed by you as a "boring period piece". Don't worry - it did that for me as well. I see anything from that era advertised, I immediately push it out of my mind because I generally don't care for those types of films. But, the director... the trailer... the cast... and frankly, the rottentomatoes rating helped shift the balance of intrigue back to me. First, the director - Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos caught my eye. He's not the type of director to give you a standard period piece. He's a (for lack of a better word) art-house director who makes quirky and dark movies like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, both of which I saw, both of which I kinda liked and also seriously hated at the same time. Then, the trailer. I wasn't bored when it saw it. In fact, I chuckled a lot during its two minute run-time subverting the expectation I had when I saw it was, indeed, a "period piece". The casting of Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, and Olivia Coleman really sucked me in. And the 97% on RT finally convinced me to give it a shot and I'm very glad that I did.

This is going to sound a little stale, but stick with me - The Favourite is a story about an ailing Queen Anne (Coleman) in the early 18th century, when Britain is at war with the French, and she has no desire to rule due to a serious bout of self-pity (and Gout). In her stead is Lady Sarah (Weisz), her longtime friend and secret lover. She rules with an iron fist without conscience and without care for anyone's feelings, including the Queen's. She's tough and therefore she wants Britain to be tough. Enter Abigail (Stone), Sarah's cousin who comes to court penniless and in search of employment. At first she's given work as a scullery maid, but when she slips the Queen some herbs to help her ailing Gout, Sarah lets Abigail be her lady-in-waiting. While Sarah deals with business in Parliament, Abigail uses this time to win over the Queen for her own dastardly plans - become a baroness once again. Her relationship with the Queen also turns into a sexual one and creates a devious love triangle between the Queen, Abigail, and Sarah. Sarah and Abigail torment one another and one-up one another in order to become... you guessed it... the favorite.

What I wouldn't have guessed about the movie is that it's equally as funny as it is seriously screwed up. I loved watching these women one-up each other in creative and dastardly ways all set in a time when women, other than the Queen, really didn't have a voice. There's a really dark sense of humor here that once you've figured out the tone of the film will really get at your funny bone, but it'll take a little bit to get used to. Each woman is fueled by her various needs and becomes likable at certain points in the film, but all are inherently unlikable. There's so many layers of character, trying to figure out who to root for becomes the fun of the film until you realize there really isn't anyone to like here. Anne is essentially a child. She pouts for a good part of the film not wanting responsibility of making wartime decisions and throwing herself on the floor in tantrum. Sarah is an icy, cold woman who stands tough, and hardly ever reveals vulnerability unless it is for her own personal benefit. Abigail, who audiences would most likely call the most likable is sweet, endearing, loving and probably the most evil of the three. Watching each layer of these characters peel back to reveal something new and terrible is the fun of the film. The humor comes from the dry wit of the era that actually lends to more laughs than you'd expect. Even as a film set in the 1700s, it's a very resonant movie today.

The one thing Lanthimos does with the film really well is he never calls attention to the fact that there is a lesbian love triangle happening onscreen. It's never called out for its same-sex relationships, especially in a time when it was more than forbidden - it would incur certain death. It's treated (as it should be) as another cinematic love triangle. You don't have to be convinced this is how it went or it doesn't have to be "talked about" at length for how strange it is for a Victorian era love triangle to be all women - it just is. Too many times filmmakers like to make it a point to show just how accepting and avante garde they are for featuring an LGBTQ relationship onscreen that it actually detracts from the point of the relationship. I loved that in this movie. While I didn't know going into it that it was part of the story, I also never questioned it as it happened. In fact, I thought it added another beautiful layer to an already twisted story. Becoming "the favorite" has a much deeper and sinister meaning for the one who prevails, which also leads to dire consequences, not just for the other, but for the whole of Britain and the outcome of the war with the French.

The writing is crisp and the directing is on point - other than several scenes shot with a panoramic lens (or fish eye lens - I couldn't tell sometimes) because they were distracting and took me immediately out of the film. But the cast helped elevate the movie. Rachel Weisz is great, as always, playing the cruel Sarah who also shares a real love and soft spot for the Queen. You will always fear her and wonder if her loyalties lie with Queen or with country, but you never question her love for Anne. Nearly every line uttered from her mouth is jaw-dropping in its malice and inevitably hilarious. Emma Stone is great and she nails it with the accent. Never once was it distracting and unbelievable. And because she is such a likable person, she lends that likability over to Abigail so we, as the audience, instinctually trust her, when by the end, we know we shouldn't. Olivia Coleman steals the show. This movie was written for her and it shows. She WILL be nominated for an Oscar because she plays Queen Anne with such a juvenile temperament, which lends to the most fun of the movie. She's so bipolar, you never know what you're going to get. One minute she's laughing and giggling, then she hears music and goes into a rage tantrum. She's not dumb, though, she's ultimately just as manipulative as Sarah and Abigail, but plays it off as aloof. She's brilliant.

While The Favourite, on the surface, may not look like your cup of tea, I urge you to give it a chance. It's funny, it's fun, it's dark, it's full of delicious wickedness and some of the best British insults you'll ever hear. The story itself could be presented in any time period and be just as brilliantly vile, but I think having it set when its set, with the characters we get, lends to the fun of the film that I already want to see again. I highly recommend it.

A

Holmes & Watson: A Lazy, Lifeless, Unfunny, Piece Of Rotten Shit, Sherlock

Let's get this out there first - I think Will Ferrell is a comedic genius. Whatever your taste in comedy may be at the moment, there's no denying that for a long time, Ferrell changed the comedy landscape forever. He came in to SNL and completely revitalized it with his unique brand of humor. Then, when he left to make movies, he created SEVERAL iconic characters that will have a lasting impact in comedy lore. Anchorman's Ron Burgandy and Talladega Nights' Ricky Bobby were two Ferrell characters that showcased just how damned funny the man could be (he also had Adam McKay by his side and a cast of brilliant comedians). Since then, Ferrell has made a lot of hit or miss films that never really reached the peak of the first two. For every Blades of Glory there's a Semi-Pro. But Holmes & Watson takes the "miss" to a whole other level. If the title of this review didn't already spell it out for you, let me reiterate - Holmes & Watson is fucking terrible.

I'm going to blaspheme right now and I apologize to those who I offend. I do not like Stepbrothers. I don't think it's the classic and funny movie that so many people have. I think that McKay and Ferrell took a step backwards with the film by getting rid of plot and creating two unlikable characters that don't really do or say anything that funny to me. I've seen it three or four times. I saw it as a young 20-something and didn't care for it. I gave it another shot in my mid-20s and didn't care for it. And I watched it earlier this year in my early 30s and my opinion hasn't changed. HOWEVER. I do understand why people enjoy it. I can admit that while I don't particularly find it that funny, I can see there is humor present in the movie that would strike someone without my own particular sense of humor. Stepbrothers is not a vast comedy that will tickle the funnybone of everyone who sees it (like Anchorman or Talladega Nights), it's a niche comedy that you either love or hate. So, why waste an entire paragraph of this review talking about a movie that's ten years old? Because unlike Stepbrothers, Holmes & Watson doesn't even have humor that SOME people would find funny. It's so wildly unfunny, you can't even force a pity laugh without succumbing to crippling sadness.

Comedy is at its worst when it's lazily written. You can hit all the script points you need to have a "story". You can add actors who are known for being funny. You can add a hook to your story to draw a crowd, but if you never give a shit about anything beyond that - it's the worst kind of comedy. I think Ferrell and John C. Reilly do have a very good chemistry, but just putting the two men in front of a camera doesn't automatically mean you've struck gold. There was a lot of potential here. I mean, Ferrell and Reilly doing a comedic take on the normally serious Sherlock Holmes and John Watson characters? I'm already sold on the pitch. But that's all the movie is - an idea that SOUNDS like it COULD HAVE been funny when really all writer/director Etan Cohen did was pitch an idea. Everything else seems like they came up with it on the day and just went with it. There's only like four set pieces to the movie. There's a seriously illogical plot. And the biggest piece of evidence this is how the production went - almost everyone has been shoddily dubbed over in the film for one reason or another. Half of the voices don't match the lips and the editor was so tired of watching the same shitty scenes over and over he just said "fuck it, it's fine."

I don't know what the hell was done to get such big names in the movie either. This film is populated with recognizable faces, not just of comedians, but serious thespians as well. I assume Ralph Fiennes just really wanted to work with Ferrell on a film at some point and didn't sign on because he'd read the script (which I also assume was impossible because there's no way this movie had a script - more the incoherent crayon drawings of a writer who accidentally pitched his way to making a movie). Rebecca Hall, Steve Coogan, Kelly Macdonald and Hugh Laurie are all a part of this traffic collision and every scene they're in, it's even more cringe-worthy because what they're given to do doesn't even sound like a funny idea that just didn't work - it just sounds terrible. A few times you could see these people drop out of character and cringe along with you. Ferrell was on James Corden's show and expressed that a comedian never sets out to make a bad movie, but sometimes when everything comes together, it just doesn't work. And for the most part, I agree with that. So, normally, when we see Ferrell doing something outrageous for a laugh that he doesn't get - you still applaud his bravery and commitment to trying to get the laugh. In Holmes & Watson it's an entirely different level. I almost felt embarrassed for him. I've never felt embarrassed for Will Ferrell. There's a scene where Sherlock, for no reason, breaks out into song... a dreadfully unfunny song that doesn't even match up to the music... and I felt embarrassed. I felt that somehow it was MY fault this was happening to Ferrell, but I couldn't stop it.

Ferrell's movies have ranged from brilliant to stupid, but without a doubt I can say that Holmes & Watson is Will Ferrell's worst movie of his entire career. This is without overstatement. And it's not even close. Whatever you consider his worst movie - this one has you checked and mated. The terrible British accents (which could've been played for laughs with a better script) hinder the moments where humor could've escaped and made it difficult to improvise since both actors looked totally uncomfortable speaking with them. The anachronistic jokes in the movie range from over-done/obvious Trump jokes to jokes about the movie Ghost (yeah, timely). There's Titanic jokes, several cocaine jokes, confusing masturbation jokes, and jokes about America. All are so forced and riddled with anti-humor that the feeling of embarrassment never leaves, it just reinforces itself in your gut so much that you want to upchuck into your bucket of popcorn (which also happens in the film). I'm not going to be one of those people who says this is the beginning of the end of Ferrell's career, but I will say he needs to get back with Adam McKay soon for a jump start. And writer/director Etan Cohen... you should be goddamn ashamed of yourself for what you did to poor Will Ferrell. You owe him an apology and probably some more money because whatever Ferrell was paid for this film will never be enough to justify its existence. 

D-

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse: Fourth Time's A Charm

Spider-Man has to be the most eye-rolling superhero for moviegoers. It's not that he's a bad, or even ineffectual superhero, and it's not an eye-rolling like say the Fantastic Four are because there are actual good Spider-Man films... there's just so damn many of them because Sony are a bunch of greedy bastards. There's the Sam Raimi trilogy with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. The Spider-Man 3 misstep sort of ended that trilogy quickly. Then... not five years later... they rebooted it with Andrew Garfield. They didn't start it up again... they rebooted it. We seriously got Peter Parker's origin story AGAIN. Those movies weren't great and after two of them... they decided to reboot Spider-Man A THIRD TIME  in a decade. Spider-Man: Homecoming is arguably the best live action Spider-Man film. I think they finally got the casting of Peter Parker right by going with an actor who actually looks and sounds like a high school student. He's not obnoxious, but quirky and the whole movie felt like a John Hughes flick. So, imagine the heightened amount of eye-rolling that occurred when I first saw a trailer for yet ANOTHER incantation - the fourth one - of Spider-Man - this one not even related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and also animated. Sony obviously can't let the character go because it doesn't matter how many times it's rebooted, spun off, or re-made... people will continue to go see it. But here's the thing - maybe we shouldn't stop them from doing it because the last few, including this one... are really good.

Miles Morales lives in our universe. He's got a teenage-y relationship with his parents, he's close to his Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali), he loves graffiti art, he's very intelligent, and he was just bitten by a radioactive spider. He starts having Spider-man-like problems and seeks help. He runs into the real Spider-Man (Chris Pine) who, at the moment, is fighting Kingpin (Liev Schrieber) and trying to stop his "machine" from ripping open a hole from another dimension. Spider-Man fails, dimensions are ripped open and the machine busts. And... not a spoiler... Spider-Man dies. Yes. Peter Parker dies. Miles is left all alone, with no one to train him, with the task of destroying the "machine" before Kingpin and his goons fix it and rips a hole big enough to end the world. That night, Miles visits Peter's grave and is visited by none other than Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) - Spider-Man from an alternate universe. Then he meets Gwen Stacey (Hailee Steinfeld), Peni Parker (Kamiko Glenn), Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), and Peter Porker - an actual animated pig (John Mulaney). All of them are different Spider-people from their own universes who were sucked into Miles'. They must get back to the "machine", use it to get home, then have one of them destroy it before they're all killed in the process. 

This version of Spider-Man is actually unlike any of the other films we've seen before. There's a different way of telling this origin story and presenting the characters and just an overall tone that has yet to be touched in a Spider-Man film yet. It's refreshing to watch because we've seen these movies repeat themselves over and over and over again that this film felt like actually watching something new. Honestly, it's like watching The Lego Batman movie after you're sick of all The Dark Knight films. It makes sense because the directors of The Lego Movie, Phil Miller and Chris Lord are directly involved with Into the Spider-Verse. The movie is filled with their fast-paced quirk and witty dialogue. It's a very, very funny movie with great character choices, while not parlaying the heart and earnestness of the characters in favor of laughs. It's perfectly balanced and does a great job of giving us a new origin story, one that doesn't feel like we've already seen it four or five times. 

The voice actors are all perfect in their roles. Jake Johnson as the slovenly Peter B. Parker brings the most comedy to the film, but John Mulaney as an animated pig Spider-Man will have you rolling and there's nothing better in the entire movie than having Nic Cage as an old-timey 1930s wise guy Spider-Man. Every time he uttered a line in the movie, I was on the floor. But Shameik Moore (Dope) really nails Miles. And he's a great character to watch. In a new school, he's already a fish out of water. No one understands him (including his parents), so he seeks refuge with his Uncle Aaron, who lets him sneak out of school and finds him abandoned walls to put up his art. So, when he has to turn into Spider-Man, he's even more out of his depth. He doesn't just "get it" like all of the other Spider-Men we've seen in past movies. In fact, he doesn't "get it" for most of the film. He has different powers and they happen by accident. For being a cartoon, it's actually the most realistic portrayal of a superhero figuring out and dealing with their powers that we've seen. That's why it was important for the relationships to be authentic in this movie and for you genuinely care about all of them. Also, Lily Tomlin shows up as Aunt May and is funny as hell. 

The animation is beyond impressive. The movie seamlessly transitions from straight up CGI-animated film to looking just like the comic book that inspired it. It's another aspect of the film that's unlike anything we've really seen before. For being the fourth iteration of a character in the last twenty years, the filmmakers did a really good job of making it feel wholly fresh and new. There were a few points where the action sequences did move a little bit too quickly and too rushed and it was difficult to tell what was happening, but it never takes you out of the film. If I wasn't so staunchly against seeing anything in 3D, I'd almost say this is the perfect movie to try and check out. 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse brings a fresh eye to an exhausting franchise - and it has nothing to do with The Avengers. I know. Good luck keeping track of all this shit. But it's a welcome entry that, if you're not aware by now, Marvel will milk until it's out of juice and will reboot again four or five years after they've claimed it's "the last one". I highly recommend checking this one out on the biggest screen you can (with as few moviegoers as possible) because not only is it a fun, exciting, and great movie... it's probably the best Spider-Man movie they've made yet. And they've made a shit ton. 

A

The Mule: One Last Weird, Quiet Ride

It's only been out for a week, but do any of you even remember this movie exists? It was kind of dropped out of nowhere and most of us who hadn't heard anything about it were surprised that Clint Eastwood was acting again - at the ripe old age of 88. I remember ten years ago when Eastwood announced his retirement from acting with Gran Tornio. That movie was so good it was a welcome, albeit sad, end to a legendary acting career. It was fitting. However, Eastwood started churning out movies he was directing and they were all meh. All of them. None of them great and none of them bad, but very vanilla bland films. So he came back to acting in 2012... with Trouble With The Curve. Oof. Now, we can't pretend that Eastwood is going to be around forever. He's pushing 90 and each movie he signs on to do could very much be his last. And had it been Gran Tornio, it would've been the perfect final film. But had it been Trouble With The Curve... oof. Shoulda stayed retired gramps. But, because Eastwood's 88-year-body is apparently more vigorous than most human beings, he's still churning out movies nearly every year - TWO this year. He returns in front of the camera with The Mule - a movie that's already been forgotten and disappeared among the high profile holiday films. However, IF this winds up being his final acting role in a film - it's not as good of a sendoff as Gran Torino, but it's a pretty decent last role.

Based on an actual true story, ol' Clint plays Earl Stone, a 90-year-old horticulturist who literally has nothing. He's lost his house and his business because of "the internet". He's lost his family because he was a terrible father and always put work over family. The only person he's close to is his granddaughter Ginny (Taissa Farmiga). When Earl is offered a job of "driving" by a guest at Ginny's wedding shower, he takes it, thinking it'll be an easy job of just driving and getting paid. What he's actually doing is taking large shipments of drugs for the Mexican cartel, run by Laton (Andy Garcia). After a hefty payment the first trip, Earl decides to go back for another ride. And then another. And then another. Until Earl has become the cartel's most successful drug mule... because who is going to suspect a 90-year-old white dude? Working on the case, however, is DEA Agent Bates (Bradley Cooper) who starts closing in on the cartel's runs and getting ever so close to discovering this mule really is.

It's actually a very, very interesting story. It's amazing to watch how Earl is so successful and how he gets out of sticky situations. As with most of Eastwood's roles, Earl is a take-no-shit cranky old man, but he's not up to the gruffness of his Gran Torino character. He's a little older, a little more senile, talks a little bit lighter, and has a much friendlier aura to him. However, he also realizes he's 90 and that nothing really scares him anymore. He's threatened several times by gun-toting cartel members and he tells them to go fuck themselves. He still likes to drink, party, and take home ladies of the night. What's also fascinating about him is that while he has a give-no-shits attitude about getting killed or caught with his drug-running, he does care about patching things up with his estranged family. He knows its never too late to start and while this job may kill him, he puts forth the effort as a 90-year-old that he hadn't put forth in the 89 years prior. Maybe Eastwood is just that watchable of an actor, but I wanted to stay with this character for even longer than the film's running time.

But, the movie itself is just okay. There's just a lot of Eastwood driving back and forth with his payload and not a lot happening in between. The scenes with him trying to repair relationships with his family become repetitive. Him trying repair - them yelling at him that he was never there. And while it was interesting to see Earl doing these drops and the reasons for them - they too get a little repetitive. The scenes with Bradley Cooper are ALSO repetitive. He brings new intel to his boss (Laurence Fishburne), asks for permission to intervene, gets it, it's wrong intel, back to the drawing board. It's a slow-moving film where not a lot happens until the end, and even then, if you've read the true story article you know what happens - it's pretty anti-climactic. But Eastwood has crafted such a good character and he's still such a powerhouse of an actor that it kept me interested and intrigued. There aren't many actors pushing 90 who would've been able to make this movie work like Eastwood does. The rest of the cast is pretty great as well. Cooper is definitely phoning it in after his brilliant performance in A Star Is Born, but even Cooper doing Eastwood a favor in this movie is great. The rest of the cast brings it and the only sore thumb among the bunch is Farmiga - who, in my opinion, is awful in everything she's in. She's definitely the wrong Farmiga to cast these days (BRING BACK VERA!!!)

So, while this PROBABLY will be Eastwood's last on-screen role, it's actually a pretty decent farewell to an actor who should've retired ten years ago. The film itself doesn't really hold up to the character, but then again, it doesn't matter because everyone has already forgotten this movie exists. This movie will live on in people who are browsing HBOGO on a Saturday night and remembered it was in theaters a few years back and you "kinda wanted to check it out" but never did. I'm sorry for potentially killing off Clint Eastwood during this entire review, but I gotta think that The Mule will be, at least for the acting side of things, Eastwood's one last weird, quiet ride.

C+

Instant Family: Quite Surprising Indeed

He may not be the greatest actor, but I feel like if I was to step into someone's career in Hollywood at this point, I'd either have to step into The Rock's career or Mark Wahlberg's. Not all of his movies are great, but I have to imagine based on the movies he's currently making, he gets a lot of really fun scripts. He's one of the rare few who isn't pigeonholed into a certain type of movie or a certain type of role. He gets to do the dumb alpha male action movies and he gets to do fun comedies. And he knows how to do both. He's one of the actors going right now who looks like he gets offered a wide array of projects in several genres and gets to do the ones he WANTS to do. He's not afraid of doing the raunchy comedy (Ted), the special effects epic (Transformers), the harrowing drama (Patriot's Day), the action-thriller (Mile 22), or even the family movie with Instant Family. While these movies may not all be winners, Wahlberg is a bankable star doing the films he most wants to do, even if a lot of these films (and his presence in them) elicits a lot of eye-rolls. When I first saw the trailer for Instant Family I thought it was a joke. It looked like a cheesy, paint-by-numbers, cliche-riddled, 90s movie we've seen a dozen times. The "laughs" in the trailer were the most obvious jokes/reactions to hackneyed situations. And Wahlberg trying to play the fish out of water dad made it look even worse. There was no way I was going to see this movie. But, as an avid rottentomatoes guy, that 82% fresh rating kept staring me in the face, daring me to see the movie. Until I caved. And I'm very glad that I did.

No thanks to a terrible trailer, Instant Family is actually a really good movie. It takes the situation of a white, childless couple adopting rowdy children of color and all the crazy antics of their lives - and actually turns it into something fresh, funny, and endearing. Wahlberg and Rose Byrne play Pete and Ellie, a couple who have focused most of their marriage on their house-flipping business. But when they decide they want a family, Ellie looks into adoption. They take the 8-week foster parent courses, meet a bunch of different children, until they decide on 15-year-old Lizzie, who comes with two smaller siblings, Juan and Lita. At first everything is going great. They're polite kids who just need a little love and guidance. But once the "honeymoon" phase wears off, shit hits the fan. Lizzie, who harbors an equal amount of love and resentment for her incarcerated druggie mother starts acting out because love and true human interaction triggers her. Juan is scared of everything and Lita is in the third year of her terrible twos, having never known what a mother is. We get to see the strife of this odd family that all comes from genuine organic places. Everyone involved is thrust into unfamiliar territory and there is no real correct way to handle it. But it's such a charming movie that you find yourself rooting for every individual character.

What looks like another white-savior movie actually turns out to say something different. Director Sean Anders even brings this idea into the focal point of the movie. Lizzie rebels against Pete and Ellie because she knows what it's like to be abandoned... especially by white people who think they're doing their moral duty of saving a bunch of minority children and when they get tired of them, they'll ditch them as well. Anders even throws in a couple of Blind Side references for good measure. But the truth of the matter is, sometimes people need people who are different than them. When Pete brings up that he doesn't want to be that white savior with these kids... the case worker relays that there are far more kids in the system than there are people willing to adopt them. It doesn't matter what they look like as long as they'll love these children and provide for them as if they were their own. It was a surprising move that wound up being highly effective. And while it's often played for laughs, there are some seriously REAL moments in the movie where Pete and Ellie, in the height of their frustration, plan ways they can "return" the children and make up a story to their families so they don't look like they gave up. These plans are never discussed with a heightened degree of seriousness, but these feel like real conversations I'm sure real adoptive parents have had at the beginning of their journeys.

While I do blame the trailer for making the movie look like something it isn't, I am glad that it didn't spoil any of the funniest and most heart-warming moments of the film. I felt like I was watching a movie I didn't know anything about and nearly everything I got to see was brand new. There are a lot of very humorous moments that have very touching after-effects. Sean Anders based this movie off his own real life experiences with adopting his children and there really is a personal touch to this movie that isn't seen in a lot of his previous work. And because it is such a personal story, the characters are a lot richer and more authentic. Wahlberg and Byrne have a great chemistry and the child actors portraying their kids are all wonderful as well. Byrne especially stands out in the film because while she's held her own in comedies like Bridesmaids and Neighbors, I never remember just how funny she actually is. Several times she had my sides splitting. Put away everything you think you're going to expect with this movie because I assure you it will exceed expectations.

The only issue I have with the movie is that it does tie up almost too nicely at the end with a couple of moments being a little too "out-there" in terms of realism, but in favor of a crowd-pleasing ending. It wasn't enough, however, to ruin what was certainly a very unexpectedly great experience I had watching the rest. It's been out for a few weeks now, but in this coming weekend of no new releases and with a LOT of good movies to choose from, Instant Family should definitely be near the top of your list.

B+

Green Book: As Heartwarming As It Is Heartbreaking

I love Oscar season. Those last couple of weeks in November and nearly the entire month of December you're going to be seeing some of the best movies of the year. These are the movies vying for coveted Oscar nominations and they're released at the end of the year so Oscar voters can remember them. This is usually when you'll get movies from the best Directors in Hollywood. Tarantino, Scorsese, Spielberg, etc. all love to release their Oscar bait films in December. However, this year, all of the aforementioned Directors don't have any films coming out. And while there are a lot of good looking (and terribly dramatic) films coming out in December, we don't have any really big tentpole Directors to latch onto in excitement for their new film. I'm excited for Barry Jenkins' follow up to Moonlight with If Beale Street Could Talk. I'm also excited for Adam McKay's follow up to The Big Short with Vice. Robert Zemeckis has Welcome to Marwen and I'm even looking forward to Clint Eastwood's The Mule (haven't been excited for an Eastwood movie in awhile). But, little did I know that I would enjoy a heartwarming movie, one of my favorites of the year, from one half of the gross-out duo Farrelly brothers. Peter Farrelly brings us Green Book, a movie that's as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking. A fantastic film.

For some reason... and this is one of the downsides of Oscar season... Green Book wasn't given a wide release. It was released a couple of weeks ago, but not at any theaters near me. I had to venture all the way to Monterrey Park. It's always upsetting to me when I see a movie that is culturally relevant and exceptional only get released to half the amount of theaters that another bullshit Robin Hood movie gets. No one wants to see another iteration of Robin Hood, but EVERYONE should see Green Book. What was inspired by a true story, tells the tale of Tony "Lip" Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), a Bronx nightclub muscleman (and sometimes personal driver) who gets recruited by African-American pianist sensation Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) to drive him on his concert tour of the deep south for two months in the early 1960s. While Tony isn't the most bigoted person in New York, he still shows contempt for people of color (two African-American repairmen drink water from his glasses and he tosses them in the trash). However, he is a hard-working family man who is true to his word in any job or situation. The two of them together is an odd-couple pairing, but it isn't good-hearted black man has to change the scarred heart of a vicious racist. The two travel the deep south, Tony acting as Dr. Shirley's driver and muscle to get him out potentially dangerous situations. Together, they're able to learn from each other, and help each other out and form what wound up being a real lifelong frienship.

I think one of the things Green Book has going for it, is it's not trying to showcase any sort of savior complex in either of the men. Shirley is not out to change Tony and Tony's not out to change Shirley. They each are looking out for their own motivations, while keeping an eye on each other. From just being who they are, they're able to see the good (and flaws) in one another and not just change their behaviors, but change who they are as men. Tony is loud, he's a constant talker, he's a bullshitter to an endearing point, but also an obnoxious one. Shirley imparts wisdom on being a better person (like not shoplifting), and improving Tony's diction when it comes to speaking with affluent crowds or writing love letters to his wife. Tony is able to show Dr. Shirley how to let loose and try different types of food or experiences and that he doesn't always have to be on guard - even as a black man in the south during a very tumultuous time. There isn't that "Oh, shit!" moment where Tony sees Dr. Shirley play piano and realize he's not a racist anymore. The two spend every day together for two months and he  learns that Shirley isn't a just another black man he has to deal with... he's just a man. A man he enjoys the company of. It's one of the most charming and engaging movies of the year.

It's also very, very funny. This is one of the pluses of having a Director whose entire career has been spent making comedy films -- he's able to inject a lot of humor into the film. Obviously there's the opportunity for a lot of laughs when you have a road trip movie and an odd couple situation at hand, but it's humor that's relevant to the times. There are real fears each man has, both internally and externally, and these fears are valid - but in their times of difference and vulnerability while experiencing these fears there's great humor to be had. There's also real sadness in the film. It's not an easy thing to watch as Dr. Shirley is used as a musical prop at each concert he performs at. He's given wide admiration during his performances, but as soon as he's done playing he's relegated to a storage room (or, as they call it, a dressing room) and denied bathroom or restaurant privileges that his white audiences are afforded. It's even harder to watch because we want him to fight back. We want him to get angry or refuse to play, but Shirley takes the non-violent MLK route and proves always to be the bigger man. And it's in these heartbreaking moment that the humor affects the movie in such a way that not a lot of movies with similar themes allow their audience to have. It wasn't funny for a black man in the south in the 60s. It was an awful and terrifying time, and in a lot of the same areas, it still is. So, it was nice to see a different, and a little bit more light-hearted, perspective without diminishing the pain these people actually experienced.

I do get that movie has its flaws in that it might give almost a too light-hearted approach, and there are some scenes that are almost too feel-good to have existed, but that's what makes the movie so wonderful. There are plenty of movies out there to showcase the bad of pre-civil rights movement America where you get to feel like shit for its entire runtime. This movie sets out to explore these moments, but give us more of the humorous human moments as well. The other thing I loved is that while, as an viewer, you will feel a lot of different emotions, there isn't a whole lot of emotional manipulation in the film that can pervade Oscar-bait movies. There isn't a moment dedicated to the film solely to make every eye in the theater weep. That's not what Farrelly was going for. He's more interested in the characters, in the men, in the friendship that organically blossomed from two flawed individuals from two very different backgrounds coming to love one another.

Even if you find it just a little bit too sentimental, everyone will love Green Book. It's the perfect film for the holiday season and to end the year on a high note. It's certainly one of my favorites of the year and the performances are stellar. I always forget how Viggo Mortensen is a natural actor who falls into every role he's given. Adapting Tony's personality for this movie, he's hardly recognizable. Mahershala Ali is also proving to be one of the most watchable actors in recent memory. He's going to go and do great things and here is no different. After this and Moonlight, I'm pretty much geared to watch the man in anything he's in. If Green Book isn't playing in a theater near you, I sincerely encourage you to take a weekend in December, make a day of it, and seek it out. It's worth all the time and money you can afford to give it. What a wonderful film.

A

Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks The Internet: A Stupid Title For A Decent Sequel

The people at Disney are very clever. They hire the creative minds the other companies just don't have. These minds are able to come up with high concept ideas, execute them beautifully, and rake in millions upon millions of dollars. The stories from these people are perfectly balanced with fun, humor, and heart. They're even able to make sequels that are oftentimes better than the originals. They attract big named actors to take part in voicing their films because everyone desires to be in a Disney or a Pixar or a Disney/Pixar film. They're the only ones making consistently great animated films for children. So if all of this is true - and it is - how the hell did no one stop them when they proposed Ralph BREAKS the Internet??? Did literally everyone involved in writing/creating the film forget that the first movie wasn't called Break-It Ralph? Did they think the general public would be too stupid to understand the play on words if the film had been called Ralph Wrecks the Internet? How does a company this clever and smart and creative let something this stupid slip through the very obvious cracks? Because it's stupid goddamn dumb.

Anyway, picking up six years after the previous movie, Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) are besties who hang out every day. They play in their games, meet for a root beer at the local tavern game, and sit in the power strip and watch the sun rise. Rinse and repeat. When Vanellope expresses how she wishes she had a new track to race on, Ralph builds her one, which ends up breaking her game. The two then must descend into the internet to look for a part that will stop her game from getting unplugged forever. After bidding an extraordinary amount on the part on eBay, the two must find a way to make money from the internet. They meet a pop up ad named Spamley (Bill Hader) who gives them the mission of going into a racing game called Slaughter Race to steal an unattainable car from a character named Shank (Gal Godot). This is where Vanellope finds her true calling. Ralph finds his making viral videos and bee puns.

While the film doesn't have that superior quality that made the first Wreck-It Ralph so funny and endearing, the sequel does impress. One thing Disney is pretty great at lately, is making a sequel that isn't just a regurgitation of the plot of the first film. They know the perfect formula - take the characters we've grown to love and put them in a new and different adventure that isn't a carbon copy of the adventure they've already been on. Don't let them make the same mistakes we were told they learned in the last film. Don't make their character growth be the same. And it's true here with this film. It's a lot of fun watching Ralph and Vanellope scour the internet because they aren't the same people they were in the first movie and they don't have the same problems and don't have to overcome the same obstacles. Ralph has finally found happiness in his best friend, but Vanellope is feeling discontent in her cookie-cutter life of doing the exact same thing every single day without any fail or change. Ralph fears the internet because it's something different - which is exactly why Vanellope embraces it. It's a nice dynamic that speaks true to a lot of real life friendships - you can have a best friend, but they don't have to share the same life as you.

The movie is very cute and adorable and has some pretty great moments of humor (though I'd say the first movie was far funnier). The only thing that just kind of put the movie in an inferior position is that there isn't an antagonist. There's no real force keeping the two of them down and making the audience fear that Ralph and Vanellope might fail their quest. They only conflict they're up against is the ticking clock. They have X amount of days before the game is shut down for good. Then they have X amount of time to find the game part. Then they have X amount of time to get the money to pay for the part. No one really stands in their way. This is actually pretty uncommon for Disney and I think it hinders the movie just a little bit. I'm usually always impressed with the way Disney comes up with such clever conflict for their characters to overcome, but this time I wasn't ever really worried for Ralph and Vanellope and I actually kept wondering if any hardship or conflict was actually going to come at all. When it does - it does seem a little forced. And the moment that briefly tears the two of them apart felt forced as well. While the rift between them is one that could have come from them, it would've felt a little more organic to have an insidious outside force causing the rift.

But overall, it's just a cute movie that both kids and parents alike can enjoy. It's just missing a few things that made the first movie great. The adventure is there and so are the laughs and the heart. While the laughs are fewer than the last one and the heart isn't as emotionally-wrecking, it's still got that wonderful Disney quality to it that elevates it above any other company trying to produce animated works. The scene with Vanellope and the Disney princesses alone is worth the price of admission. Make sure you stay for the entire length of the credits. There's a scene in the middle that's pretty hilarious and one more at the very end that killed me. Ralph WRECKS the Internet is a solid Disney sequel that's worth a lot more than it's dumbass name suggests.

B