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Reviews
The Killer (2023)
Ponderous and Dull
As a great admirer of both Fincher and Fassbender in each of their respective jobs I was all a-titter about "The Killer." To say it is an overtly ponderous and weighty "study" of murderers for hire however is an understatement. Though it's not short on action and gratuitous violence (as is expected) it magically manages to generally be pretty boring in spite of this.
It spends at least the first 15-20 minutes splashing voiceovers of Fassbender philosophically commenting on the various ups and downs of his chosen career - its obvious dangers, the boring parts, the nature of living in a world like his.
At roughly that 15-20 minute mark the hit he had been preparing for is finally a go however inexplicably he misses his intended target - understanding that he is NEVER one to miss, the reason why he is so well compensated, among others.
He and his lover immediately become targets by his handlers who will permit anything except failure. The handlers are of course (as you would expect) shadowy denizens he's never really suppose to ever know or meet in person. Knowing it's either kill or be killed he bounces around the globe dispatching them one by one (and this is the essential plot of "The Killer"), all of course executed in an orgy of excessive and wildly gratuitous violence.
I suppose an argument could be made that the heavy dependence on the protagonist's inner monologue hints at the relative isolation of his work, that in reality he rarely speaks with or even interacts with the world around him except of course when he's killing someone.
I'd agree with others: "The Killer" is mostly style over substance. While it's always easy to armchair quarterback a work of art and highlight its flaws, it hurts most when the obvious talent behind it should have made a better film.
I suppose maybe even Scorcese or Coppola had their off days but I am puzzled how it could have been watched during editing and there not be a sense that substance was lacking.
Schitt$ Creek (2015)
Often very funny and quirky show about the fictional Rose family
Written and created by comedy legend Eugene Levy (SCTV among many movies and shows) along with his real life son Daniel, Schitt's Creek centers mostly around the down-on-their-luck once very wealthy Rose family resigned to living in a roadside motel in the Canadian backwater town of Schitt's Creek. The Roses apparently own some stake in the motel - essentially their only remaining asset of any value left to them by the government that gutted their fortune - and patriarch Johnny (Eugene), mom Moira (another legend Catherine O'Hara, affecting what may be the strangest but often quite funny accent maybe in TV history), son David (Daniel), and daughter Alexis (Annie Murphy), the adult children especially horrified as fish out of water early in the series. Another actual Levy child (Sarah Levy) also plays waitress Twyla at the small town's main cafe.
The little town is populated by a multitude of quirky characters not the least of which is Chris Elliot as town forebear Roland Schitt, often saying some of the series' most ridiculous and absurd and honestly fairly stupid lines but such is the quirkiness of his character. Same with auto garage owner Bob who rarely makes any sense at all or just makes truly weird and bizarre comments. There is often an almost absurdist quality to the show without it being surreal. It still feels grounded in the various foibles of the Rose family.
I'll admit it took me a while to warm up to the series. The episodes are quite short, almost bite-sized (22 minutes) so even if your patience with some of the weird stories, characters, and tangents the show goes off on wears thin there can be little bits of heartwarming charm and even brilliant interplay between the characters that can redeem the show. It's basically a show you have to get in the groove of.
The short episodes also permits the show to have very tightly edited scenes and scenarios that they rarely spend more than 2-4 minutes on. Its pacing is tight and often refreshing. Some big set pieces might go on for maybe 5 minutes but those are rare. Long story arcs mostly don't exist in Schitt's Creek.
I think many will find Schitt's Creek funny along with its often quite charming if not utterly ridiculous characters. Some of the relationships the Roses develop with the townspeople are downright heartwarming, even as they often appear as some of the most self-centered people in the universe, especially moreso in the first couple seasons.
Reptile (2023)
Starts good but drags and drags
I greatly enjoyed Reptile's first act and the unfolding of the murder mystery was interesting and Benicio Del Toro's grizzled detective funny and engaging. There was plenty of interesting if typical twists and turns.
I must say though as the mystery deepens the pacing becomes glacial and the story and the twists and turns (all supposed to pull you further into the story and keep you engaged) ponderous. They could have easily trimmed 20+ minutes off this 2+ hour movie and massively tightened up the cadence of the film.
You know when a film feels like a chore to watch something has gone wrong and I don't believe it's merely a product of our short attention spans. I think they have a very solid story but again the bouncing around between different characters that didn't seem to bring much to the story - or at least if they did why didn't they get to the point faster.
Justin Timberlake seemed to be a main character at the beginning but then seems to disappear and when you do see him he's always standing in a room in an empty house - acknowledging yes his character is a real estate agent so obviously this is to be expected to a degree.
Benicio Del Toro is very good even if his face and physical presence kind of presents like a film noir detective version of Eeyore. I liked his character a lot. He's such an understated actor.
There's a lot of heavy and deliberate use of surreal, creepy, atmospheric music to try to convey a certain mood. It felt overdone.
Ultimately the film has good "bones" and the story is solid but something got lost in the editing process.
Echoes (2022)
A meandering thriller with lots of loose ends
"Echoes" starts and effectively ends as a somewhat meandering character study of two deeply intertwined twins caught (we ultimately learn) in a decades-long series of somewhat strange and I found improbable lies, omissions, and half-truths.
The twins Leni and Gina - played capably by Michelle Monaghan - have spent much of their lives building a strange integrated yet also separate lives, agreeing at some point to spend alternating years as one another I suppose for the thrill of it.
The story begins with Leni - or is it Gina pretending to be Leni? - gone missing from her husband and family farm. It appears horses have been let loose and Leni has disappeared, the entire small town set upon finding her.
Gina, her California-based cosmopolitan twin, shows up on the country farm to help in the search and slowly provide context for the long series of bizarre twists and turns to the story. In fact both twins don't show up together on screen until I believe the 3rd or 4th episode.
There's the nosy and oddly gifted town sheriff (think a female version of Columbo basically) who senses the sisters have been involved in all manner of intrigue and mischief from a church fire 10+ years prior to the abrupt murder of an old boyfriend to the possible murder of their father who ends up dying in a house fire. And it's also possible the father mercy killed their mother who was dying from cancer many years before.
Gina's California husband has long been clued in to the twins regular identity switching and in fact gets a kind of thrill from it. The country husband - Leni's husband - played by Matt Bomer - also seems to have some inkling of what is going on with the sisters but is less tolerant of it all.
At the end of the series it seems Gina may have died falling over a waterfall but we're also lead to believe she may also still be alive.
Few of the numerous threads and loose ends of "Echoes" are tied up with any neatness or clarity, still leaving various murder charges on the table as well as lack of certainty if Gina is actually dead. The final episode leaves rather more questions than it answers with Charlie, Gina's psychotherapist husband (or is it widower now?) having written a bestselling book about the bizarre nature of the twins' lives and possible deaths.
"Echoes" does certainly have an interesting premise but chooses not to handle it clearly or even deal in an effective manner with even the more intriguing "gotcha" aspects to the twin sisters' strange relationship. It felt rather unfulfilling at the end to be left hanging with so many unanswered questions.
The Poison Rose (2019)
A strange little attempt at film noir that almost works
Weirdly full of Hollywood heavyweights (though most admittedly on the wane like Travolta, sporting a pretty good glued on rug like Shatner and Stallone), The Poison Rose nibbles around the edges of being a serviceable Hammett/Chandler/Black Mask like film noir but unfortunately never really gets there.
The basic story is a private dick drawn back to his hometown (Savannah, GA standing in for a wildly corrupt Galveston, TX) by a missing persons case, a town now under the thumb of a kind of bookie gone big time, played competently by Morgan Freeman and whose signature catch phrase is "I never lose," a line repeated often enough you start to believe he actually means it.
The said missing person is supposed to be housed at a kind of high priced private nut house/mental institution, overseen by a VERY quirky Brendan Fraser as the supervising doctor. Remember this is not long before Fraser's very recent career revival - and I suspect the principal reason the movie bubbled up in the Netflix recommendations. He's actually rather absurd as the doctor and plays him somewhat needlessly to the hilt as a kind of archetypal Southerner, but it's still pretty funny stuff.
The Galveston of The Poison Rose is a town hopelessly entangled in corrupt business persons, oil men living and dead, and of course football gets in there somehow. Hey it's supposed to be Texas so let's not forget that trope.
The missing person case ultimately becomes a distracting sideline to Travolta's private dick unraveling of murder, missing persons, weird but corrupt doctors, weird but corrupt police, and a guy running a gambling saloon running the whole show. Oh yea and without spoiling the central spoiler there's some family intrigue.
I didn't mind Travolta so much and most of the time kind of enjoy his dry, Marlowe-esque delivery. He's also inexplicably the best shot in the west whereas even guys with shotguns and machine guns can't seem to hit the broad side of a barn. His character should have gone into the morgue several times throughout the movie yet somehow escapes without a scratch.
The basic story isn't bad and you can't go wrong with a host of ex-A listers I assume getting nice paychecks to slum in movies like this but it also gives the movie a certain veneer it can't quite overcome: It wants to be a better movie than it actually can be. It needs better writing and directing. Helmed and seemingly financed by a cabal of Italians (nothing wrong with that at all of course; some of the greatest filmmakers in history were Italian), I suppose the dollars (or lira) were there just not the weight of experience. I felt about a dozen times where the film could and should have been been better.
Overall The Poison Rose was pretty good and I liked it as I often enjoy film noirs but well sorry this isn't 1/100th of Chinatown exactly.
You People (2023)
Funny the first half; disposable the second half
I found myself laughing a lot through roughly the first half of "You People." The setup for what the movie became in the second half seemed like a good start.
Instead it became clear that the "guess who's coming to dinner?" movie trope has become tired and ultimately boring and not particularly funny.
Incredibly one of the great comic actors of our time, Eddie Murphy, was not simply wildly unfunny for the entire movie but played a character who was weirdly abrasive and just generally mean. I understand this is kind of how his character is supposed to be (as the disapproving dad) but still oddly he plays a militant Nation of Islam member named Akbar who not only doesn't try to relate to his prospective son-in-law but seems eager to demean and insult Ezra, Jonah Hill's character. He softens up by the end of the movie but it doesn't particularly redeem the general terribleness of his character that doesn't strike really a single funny note the entire movie.
The Jewish contingent doesn't fare much better with Ezra's mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, yet another character that can't seem to find her funny bone) devolving into a series of unfunny and super cringey attempts to be "hip." The only thing that kind of works for humor is Ezra's dad (David Duchovny) who pretends to be super into the rapper Xzibit. I actually chuckled a bit at that.
Naturally and quite transparently the movie is ultimately about white-black race relations and obviously director Kenya Barris has made quite the respectable career endlessly mining the grievance culture. I expected that and cool I get it. But please by all means give me humor in a movie that's actually supposed to be funny. The white-black race relations aspects are handled gracefully by Ezra's relationship not just with his black fiancé but also his black podcast partner. Neither are particularly heavy-handed and we get perspectives from both sides.
End of the day I wanted the many great comedic talents brought into this film to have funnier bits and lines. Jonah Hill being Jonah Hill at the beginning - that was funny - but to waste Eddie Murphy I mean come on. I know he probably hasn't been on the bleeding edge of American comedy for 20+ years and has basically made a long series of "paying the rent" type of movies (and "You People" may just be another one of those for him) but it's just wrong not to give him more to work with here. This is worth watching for some good laughs at the beginning but when the movie moves into the "fish out of water" scenes between Ezra and his fiance's family, his fiance's family and his family, etc. It just is groan-inducing and not entertaining. Even the slapsticky scenes are lacking. You'd probably do well to just turn the movie off at that point.
The Bear (2022)
Heard a lot about and "The Bear" didn't disappoint
I heard so much about how raw, how stressful, how intense "The Bear" was for several months before finally making the leap and binge watching the series with the wife.
It's all that of course: An intense study of the terrible lows and the awesome highs of making food for hungry people in an old-school Chicago beef sandwich shop by Carmy, a world-class culinary-trained chef who largely escaped the circumstances of his birth - but then he was willed the sandwich shop by his brother who killed himself. Carmy is working intensely to put his fingerprints and the discipline he learned in fine dining for a diametric opposite type of kitchen.
The work of the chefs is well known to anyone in the food service business and will probably give most of them serious PTSD watching "The Bear."
There's a copious amount of twists and turns but my takeaway from all of this brilliant series is that it really comes down to family.
There were two characters I HATED at the beginning of this show: Tina and Richie, the former a cook at the restaurant who really can't stand the new direction of the shop and tries to sabotage herself and other chefs and the latter Carmy's cousin who also can't stand the new direction of the shop.
Then subtly they both change to the point where I absolutely love them both, Richie especially who while being an incredibly loud and a boorish (you know what) in the shop is a highly sensitive divorced father you know 100% know would take a bullet for his kid and really probably anyone in his family, including Carmy. There's several absolute knockout hilarious moments where I feel like Richie has almost like a background/Greek chorus kind of moment where he quietly comments on the dialogue going on around him. Be on the lookout for it (maybe ep. 5 or 6?) Can't remember exactly but closer to the end of the season.
Also toward the end of the series Carmy goes to an Al-Anon meeting and gets up to the front to tell his story for the first time - this is after an absolutely insane blow-up he has I think in Ep.7 so maybe Ep.8? - and it's just so so so amazing. He's right in front of the camera finally dumping the world that's been on his shoulders non-stop I don't know for 5 or 6 minutes? There are zero cuts, zero pauses, zero edits from the camera - he just goes and goes and goes and bares his soul.
I'm sorry but that's great drama, great acting, great directing all the way.
Yes "The Bear" is intense, utterly insane at times, but if you don't appreciate it for all its many moments of often quite mellow and subtle humor and drama I am not sure I want to know you.
100% worth your time and involvement. "The Bear" pays off, big, for your time.
Uncharted (2022)
Deeply predictable and a suspension of belief festival
I'll admit video game franchise film adaptations are a low bar in terms of quality, believability, and general entertainment.
"Uncharted" seems to fit rather perfectly into the lowest rung of believability I've watched in some time. It glosses copiously over plot points that seem like shocking "gimmes" for the lead characters - stealing artifacts, finding incredibly important archaeological finds that were miraculously hidden for hundreds of years (how?), and improbably / impossibly finding clues with seeming ease that eluded experienced adventurers and treasure hunters again for 100s of years.
It's a lot to swallow in 2 hours but I'm OK ignoring such generic and lightweight script fluff while being entertained and I suppose "Uncharted" is entertaining enough. Tom Holland has a rough go carrying a film of this scope on his own and "Marky Mark" Wahlberg (sorry but he'll always be the pants-dropping fake rapper to me) in general doesn't seem to be trying very hard. Even notable scene-chewer Antonio Banderas is killed pretty early on.
Even the antagonists aren't that convincing including the one that seems to run around and enjoy slicing people's throats. Nathan Drake's (Holland's) prospective love interest / character foil is attractive but not quite competent enough to pull either character up from the formulaic action-adventure dregs.
Naturally the action is copious, occasionally fun and all utterly ridiculous. Films of these type take their cues from the stupid and improbable physics of video games and are decidedly displaced from reality.
I'm not sure I could easily recommend it and rather enjoyed the food at the theater we went to move than the movie itself. Maybe when it arrives on streaming it'll be an entertaining watch but I don't think I'd waste the money in the theater again.
Out of Death (2021)
A silly implausible story that never rises to mediocrity
Jaime King, Bruce Willis, and a host of actors that I can guarantee you've never heard of - including apparently some sort of social media phenomenon who plays the female sheriff - show up in this slight actioner searching for a title. Seriously what does the title even mean and how does it even relate to the spare plot afforded by this rather terrible film?
The story centers around a wildly corrupt rural sheriff's department that is hopelessly caught up with drug cartels to supplement their measly mountain law enforcement officer salary. One of these sheriffs decides to execute a cartel connection who attempts to run away but is seen by a woman (Jaime King) who is taking her father's ashes up into the hills and photographs and records the entire execution on her camera.
This leads to a very much Keystone Kops type series of failures and escapades to catch King's character by the female and male chain-smoking sheriffs who couldn't catch a ladybug if it landed on their finger.
Into the fray comes Bruce Willis' just retired NYPD cop (John McClain anyone?) who has just inherited a remote cabin in the same woods and stumbles on the fumbling bumbling country sheriffs attempting to execute the poor woman who likewise had just been out for a peaceful hike.
He interrupts their plans and King's character is able to get away but the sheriffs are still not done screwing up.
In fact that's my biggest issue with a movie that I don't even expect to be even mediocre: the sheer incompetence of the bad guys means there's no actual suspense. Even the quasi sinister head sheriff who makes some vague attempt at a plan to have his way with Willis after all his other options are essentially exhausted is in no way believable. The other sheriffs are so bad, so incompetent you never have even a hint that King's character is ever even remotely in danger. Yes true enough she faces a bit of mortal danger here and there but so little it's laughable.
As far as Bruce Willis goes his screen time is actually rather slim here and if you read the notes on the film you learn it was filmed at the height of COVID and Willis was only present on set for *1 day.*. Of all the actors on the film in fact Willis is most guilty of completely phoning it in. He's so utterly flat here he's almost unrecognizable. The other actors actually do far better and at least show they're trying. Even the social media phenomenon turned actor had a much better showing on film than Bruce Willis. King is also also quite good and actually conveys emotion.
I'm sure it must be disappointing to be at such a low ebb in one's career as Willis apparently is - he's done a large slate of these highly forgettable action films in the last several years - but honestly it's pretty embarrassing.
All said I can't even recommend this as a forgettable action flick to indulge as brainless mind candy. Had they at least been able to maintain some level of suspense and danger I could but everything is so absurdly telegraphed and the "bad guys" so bad at being bad guys I can't.
Skip this one for sure.
Jasper Mall (2020)
A snapshot view of a receding and dying world.
Like nearly all GenXers I spent many hours of my teen years in particular at my local indoor shopping mall. May Company, Broadway, Brock's, The Limited, B. Dalton Books, Miller's Outpost, Foot Locker, and of course the once stalwart bedrocks of American retail, JC Penney and Sears, were usually at most malls I went to.
Sometime in the 90s to the early aughts the retail landscape began to change. The standard American mall began to lose more and more tenants, presumably to the ever growing big boxers like Wal-Mart and Target, which were vastly cheaper than the really high overhead mall tenants.
Then Amazon ascended sometime around the 2010s, squeezing both big box retail but more specifically the quintessential indoor mall. Aging malls built in the early to mid 80s in particular were well on their way to demolition.
I personally have witnessed multiple malls large and small bite the dust. Even those that managed to reclaim a coveted anchor tenant - I saw one mall get a Target attached directly to the mall and another get a large Whole Foods, a move that was considered a massive coup at the time for a mall that was huge and built way back in the 60s. The truth was most of its long promenades were simply ghost towns and almost entirely devoid of shops and the only real "buzz" was in Whole Foods. One time I went to that same mall with my kids for a big ticket giveaway to an extremely popular boy band concert that was co-marketed with a local top 40 radio station. A few hundred kids showed up, nearly all girls (and a bunch of dads like me). They were screaming and all super excited of course. The mall actually had some life back in it.
After the 45 minute or so giveaway was over the crowd rapidly dissipated and exited the mall. Not a single family hung around to shop for clothes at a store or trinkets at Claire's (a favorite of early teen girls usually). I hung around long enough to see the mall get quiet and dead again. It was depressing. The attempt to give the mall a shot in the arm had largely failed.
"The Jasper Mall" is a snapshot of just such a mall: Dead or dying and on its last legs, mostly populated by middle aged mall walkers getting out of the heat or the cold. Few if any food places left and a handful of retail barely hanging on. During the filming at least two of the business owners being filmed left the mall, one owner retiring and the other pulling up stakes to try making his jewelry business work at a better location outside the mall. Recounting his lowest daily sales it was clear he couldn't make his business work at the mall.
Though it's doing better than this mall the small city I live in now has a similar aging, dying mall - though it's not nearly as precarious as the Jasper Mall. The food court is still active and there's several well known national retailers still in the mall and at least 2 anchors left. It's had some renovations over the years and most weekends is pretty busy. It also probably benefits from the city itself not having a real historic type downtown area so while there's a ton of retail all around town including many big box retailers the mall itself definitely has the feel of a bygone era of retail. Macy's in particular is gone and its hulk of an empty store is rather an eyesore facing the freeway. Even during the holiday season the mall gets quite busy but its massive parking lots still being at most two-thirds full of cars in its best holiday weekends hints of an era long gone.
For those complaining that the Jasper Mall doesn't dig into the unfortunate history of American malls and the general misfortune that has struck retail in general I'd argue the documentary attempts to show the dirty, dark truth of what is and has really happened at the mall in a true, unvarnished way. It's abundantly clear the mall is on its last legs and that reality is not pretty. In its own way it's harrowing to see what was once a long entrenched fixture of American retail dying on the vine, almost certainly consigned to the bulldozer, history and memories disappearing without a funeral, without a memorial, without an epilogue.
Admittedly this is not the most exciting or necessarily the most interesting documentary you've ever watched but I do have a certain affinity for documentaries that explore slices of life and history that on the surface seems quite tepid and mundane. In reality the indoor air conditioned mall was a crucial part of the growth of suburbia and the expansion of the country. They were in effect the "downtowns" of suburbia and for decades they ceaselessly attracted millions and millions of shoppers. That it is largely a dying phenomenon is worth a watch.
Maid (2021)
Beautifully crafted, harrowing, and wonderful
"Maid" is, by any account, wonderfully acted, written, and told through the quite real-life of a woman and young mother on the edge - of homelessness, of survival, of being there for her child and fighting proudly, profoundly, and deeply against the forces that would seek to take her down.
It's certainly something to be absorbed: The ups and downs of Alex and her daughter Madison's lives are utterly harrowing and at times gut-wrenching. Just when they are on the cusp of everything going their way the reality of their lives gets in the way and knocks them back a few (dozen, at times) pegs.
The series starts and I think quite smartly ends with Alex leaving, then returning, then leaving an emotionally abusive relationship - a boyfriend (Maddy's father) who is deeply emotionally abusive and controlling. All the way along connections are made between the past abuse she and her mother went through at the hands of her father - a man trying to reconcile with her but is also fully unable to come to terms with what he did to her and her mother.
Enough cannot be said of Alex's (Margaret Qualley's real-life!) mother Paula, played flawlessly and with utter manic perfection by Andie MacDowell. My goodness she is just so perfect. She plays the utterly maddening, manic, at times seemingly insane Paula as a woman who has spent quite literally her entire life under the control of abusive men. She seems unable - or, to the point, unwilling - to escape from such men. It helps us understand why Alex is the way she is and why she is herself unwilling to simply fall back under the abusiveness of her boyfriend, no matter that it's her child's father.
The scenes of abused women in emergency shelters, escaping often violent and deeply harrowing situations with terribly abusive men, is something that should be seen and understood by all. Yes I know it's fiction but there are soooo many subtleties to that "world" (such as it is) that seems so real, so visceral, and so awful. It's terrible to know such places must exist in our world, but I for one am glad they do and that women and children consumed by violence have ways to escape.
The entire "Maid" series is very well composed and artfully and beautifully acted. The ups and downs of Alex and "Maddy" lives are as wild as a rough as an old amusement park's roller coaster ride, but it's a ride well worth going on.
100% worth the time and energy investment in these characters and their stories. You will be affected deeply but in ultimately a positive way.
Val (2021)
An excellent, largely unvarnished view into a flawed human
"Val" - a quasi-autobiographical documentary self-produced by the famed actor Val Kilmer who from the early 80s onward filmed many thousands of hours of himself and others as one of the very earliest owners of a video camera.
Much of the footage is largely before the advent of 24/7 constant coverage and capture of the minutiae of our daily lives on our devices and social media so Val Kilmer's prescience (or vanity/ego-centeredness; take it as you like) to actually begin to film himself from essentially the beginning of his film career onward seems eerily apropos especially for someone who has spent much of his life in front of a camera.
From "Top Secret" (his very first film!) to "Real Genius" (one of my all-time faves) to "Batman" and of course "Top Gun" and "Heat" and the legendary "Tombstone" I've always enjoyed Val Kilmer's style and on-screen presence. He could certainly be guilty of some over-acting (interestingly you see him do some of it when training at Juilliard), but I think he did it in service of roles that seemed vacant of characterization on the page. Had he not it's likely we never would have had such a memorable character like Top Gun's "Ice Man," essentially one of his most well-known characters if not the most well-known. Lacking that - a sense of rivalry, a bit of perhaps over-done dramatics - it's not likely we would have remembered the character very much nor would "Top Gun" have been quite as good.
We alternate between these reminiscences of his past mostly very well-known film work to his current day to day life. Kilmer had been diagnosed with throat cancer a few years back and while his treatment has been effective the radiation and chemo treatments effectively killed his vocal chords and he can now only speak through the hole in his throat. He is now mostly resolved to traveling around the country, often with his son Jack, to various events where he does signatures for money (Comic-Con, Tombstone Days, etc.) to make any kind of income. Interestingly his son Jack is actually the voice-over narrator of the documentary because he sounds so much like a young Val and the effect works surprisingly well.
He depressingly acknowledges the levels he's had to "sink" to make a buck - it's all but certain he could be working successfully in film again if his voice wasn't out of commission - but instead he's mining what he can of his legacy to survive because he is simply unable to work as an actor any more.
The documentary itself is obviously to some degree an attempt for him to make some money but clearly some was invested to make it at all and sell it to Amazon. Still, it doesn't really feel at all like a tawdry bit of gratuitous self-promotion. It's a hard look at his past and present and there's a fair amount of ugliness he seems willing to open up to the world. I found "Val" a fascinating study of a certainly flawed but ultimately very talented artist.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Starts great; ends poorly
"The Tomorrow War" is certainly entertaining enough and the premise is interesting: the earth 30 years in the future is being overrun by a truly voracious and nasty alien species that are affectionately nicknamed "whitespikes" (for their weapon of choice which they shoot out from tentacles). The dwindling numbers of humans remaining in a desperate bid to save the planet and themselves figure out how to time travel using a fragile time travel portal - time link or jump - to return to the past and bring past humans into the future. They use this portal to bring people from the past 30 years into the future both to fight the whitespikes but also to put fresh eyes on what is a dire and truly desperate situation and focus scientific research on how better to kill the alien critters that have effectively overrun the planet.
This basic premise holds up pretty well during roughly the first two acts of "The Tomorrow War" but once Chris Pratt's character Dan Forester returns to the past - all combatants who are conscripted into service are automatically "jumped" back in time after 7 days in the highly unlikely event they survive - the movie begins to fall apart quickly with Mack Truck-wide plot holes that quickly begin to feel pretty ridiculous.
One of the more obvious examples is after returning Pratt has the brilliant insight to really think about, uh, gee where'd these crazy alien beasts suddenly show up from when there was no apparent landing of an alien ship on earth when the attacks started. Though this had occurred to both current and future humans Chris and his ragtag team of misfits figure it out in like 5 minutes, are able to fly a big C130-type airplane into Russian airspace (SPOILER it turns out the aliens were indeed hiding deep under the frozen Russian tundra probably for 1000s of years), and within a few hours miraculously discover the hidden under a thousand feet of ice crash landed alien ship with a bunch of hibernating whitespikes in the cargo hold.
The entire setup of the third act feels incredibly rushed and silly. I mean come on all of the planet's CURRENT pack of genius scientists and engineers couldn't have endeavored to figure out where the future's alien nasties came from? They had to come from SOMEWHERE right? If they didn't in fact land an alien ship on the planet to begin the attack - which it's clear they didn't- none of our geniuses strives to figure exactly when, how, and where these aliens appeared on the planet. Instead it falls on the shoulders of a super nerdy high school kid who really loves vulcanology to determine that the whitespikes have ancient volcanic ash on it, indicating the approximate (vast) region where a massive volcanic explosion happened in the distant past.
Also it's unclear why they couldn't have simply nuked the female whitespikes- which are relatively few in number and fiercely protected by the males. They wouldn't really have needed even to nuke them but just dump a bunker buster type bomb on their nests and bam you knock off a big chunk of their reproductive capacity. I suppose the theory is they tried that or in the future on a planet rapidly overrun with voracious aliens who essentially eat their way through the indigenous population they rapidly run out of high speed industrial capacity to make tens or hundreds of thousands of such bombs. So I'll give that plot hole a pass.
It's also somewhat unclear what the whitespikes would do once they successfully overrun the planet. The implication from the crash landed alien craft discovered in the third act is that it's actually some other alien race that drops the whitespikes off on some poor unfortunate planet to depopulate it then I assume strip it of its natural resources. One can only assume this other alien race (that we learn nothing about) must be well aware of how to kill off the whitespikes once they've served their purpose as how would these other aliens be able to strip the planet with billions of these whitespikes running around?
Or maybe they're just sadistic nutjobs who enjoy terrorizing planets and don't really care how it's done and who does it. They don't dig deep trying to figure that one out but then I suppose it's not that important as the understandable immediate urgent priority of the movie is to perpetuate the survival of the species rather than extrapolate what motivated some freaky alien race to attempt to come and consume the earth.
In any case if you can tolerate the rather flimsy third act "The Tomorrow War" really is rather entertaining as a pure actioner. I just wish they had worked a lot harder on that final act to make it more believable.
How Do You Know (2010)
Didn't feel well-cast or particularly well-written (or maybe just poorly directed?)
For a James L. Brooks rom com with such sterling cast in both the "rom" and "com" categories - I was, uh... expecting more from "How Do You Know?"
I spent much of this movie trying to find the bead with the protagonist, Paul Rudd's George Madison, a kind of weird ADD case who wants desperately to be more lovable / likable / desirable. I couldn't. Rudd seems to be playing to a type here - kind of a quirky, weird, strange, but oh so eminently likable every man - but the schtick to my mind kind of falls flat. I love Paul Rudd of course but he seems to be missing good direction on how to "find" his character throughout the movie.
He plays the very approximate foil (as in, they seem to share some screen time and space) to Owen Wilson's womanizing professional baseball player who can't seem to commit - but faux-really-really-wants-to (he doesn't, really) to Reese Witherspoon's slightly over-the-hill softball Olympian at the crux of a major life shift. She seems to want to be with Wilson, but doesn't, but does, but doesn't. Wilson seems riddled with a series of flaws common to a highly successful man-child whose ego is constantly catered to and has had innumerable meaningless flings and depthless relationships with women. He's trying and failing to be a serious adult, which irks Witherspoon's character but she can't quite find the resolve to kick the guy to the curb (though she inexplicably moves in then out then in then out of his luxurious millionaire ball player's condo).
Brought into this dynamic is Rudd's George Madison, the more sensitive, intuitively sweet and loving type vs. Owen Wilson's character but even he has immediately just gotten out of a relationship with a woman who seems to want to do the on-again, off-again thing with Wilson when it suits her. George seems rather compliant in this regard but then immediately goes after Witherspoon's character when the opportunity presents itself.
Typically James L. Brooks' romantic comedies like this work incredibly well with the strength of the actors, writing, and direction involved - but everything about "How Do You Know" seems to be hitting wide of the mark. Rudd's George isn't as endearing, lovable, quirky, or as interesting as you really want him to be. Same with Witherspoon. I honestly didn't feel grabbed by any serious chemistry. She seems alternately puzzled and charmed by Rudd's weirdness and strange behavior, but even then it's not always believable to me.
Did I mention Jack Nicholson was in this? Go figure. Yes he plays George's morally questionable father who has put the company George has been running - technically his father's company - into dire financial and legal straits. The details aren't particularly important as George seems to be stumbling through role as "the boss" anyway and somehow missed all the sketchy stuff going on behind the scenes. It puts George into a bit of a moral dilemma about whether to save his father or save himself but the legal drama that starts the movie off isn't especially important or even all that interesting.
Nicholson is great but seems to be huffing-and-puffing his way along. I'm always a little shocked to see Nicholson is still alive after all these years, given what seems to be his steady diet of cheeseburgers. He seems to be taking a sheet from Marlon Brando's playbook: I'm here for a good time not a long time (though I'd say he's lived far longer than what most consider his sell-by date). His doctors are probably marveling that he has not yet keeled over from a heart attack.
You don't have to wonder why you've almost certainly never heard of this movie. It really is kind of a strange little film that has a decent, respectable premise but ultimately kind of weird execution and direction. There's a few good jokes here and there, some decent acting, but I felt like the protagonist needed better direction to find his center. Rudd may not have been the best casting here but then again maybe he would have done just fine with a different direction.
Incredibles 2 (2018)
Entertaining, but a vague re-hash of the firsr
"The Incredibles" was - and it remains - the gold standard of Pixar films. It was in many respects the high water mark of their team of creative visionaries - and it proved a prescient and brilliant move for them to bring in Brad Bird during a creative slump. Bird completely reenergized a major movie studio in the creative doldrums.
In fact after "Cars" I was genuinely concerned that they had lost their mojo - again. I wondered if they had reached their creative peak with "The Incredibles" and their best work was behind them.
"Toy Story 3" - another sequel very long in the making - "Inside Out" and now "Coco" proved me wrong. While perhaps not quite as good as "The Incredibles" they were great, engaging and deeply emotional and creative films. I loved them and it was clear the team behind loved the material too.
I was concerned even before "The Incredibles 2" started. They - the film's principal voice actors - and Brad Bird himself (again helming as writer and director) came on screen to, one thank "The Incredibles" many many fans for being so patient, but also to assure those same fans that it would be well worth the wait - before we had seen one minute of film.
Such assurances felt gratuitous. A great film speaks for itself and stands on its own. There is no need to psyche us out and "guarantee" us that the sequel will be at least as equally good as the original. I was worried and it turns out I had good cause to be.
As it turns out "The Incredibles 2" is not only not as good as the original - far from it - but it feels somewhat like a retread of the original story - with far less engagement and emotional attachment than we had with the characters originally.
Yes there are innumerable great action sequences and superb animation (I would say the animated characters and scenes felt "slicker" and more 2D in the original whereas here everything feels slightly rounder, fuller, and more 3D - somewhat like you'd expect with modern Disney Studio digital animation) but there seemed to be a heavy reliance on the original including plenty of nearly word for word copying of some of the original dialog. It was somewhat eerie hearing the same dialogue and verbal cues when it didn't quite seem necessary. I get wanting to do something of an homage to the original but I heard the same cues so often it felt like it was overdone.
I won't recount the plot as others have done but it bears numerous similarities to the original including a central character who hates supers and wants revenge against them.
Elastigirl was much more the main character this time with Mr. Incredible and the kids playing almost in the background - though certainly they're all central to the story. Dash had a lot of screen time as did Jack-Jack but as a super felt almost completely unused. Interestingly Frozone had a great deal more screen time than the original and actually felt quite well used vs. the original. Frozone's talents seemed rather silly in the original (oooooh look he can throw up big walls of ice, whoopie) but I thought they did a super job of exploiting his capabilities in the sequel.
While the quality was there in "The Incredibles 2", the engagement was not. The love I felt for the original characters and story was not broadly in evidence. It turned out to be a big disappointment.
In retrospect I think it would have been wise for Bird to sit this one out. Just as George Lucas wisely brought in a great and highly competent director for the very first "Star Wars" sequel - The Empire Strikes Back (now widely considered the best of that series) - Bird and Pixar/Disney would have been wise to bring in a creative team with an almost reverent love for the original but also a fresh creative energy, especially when it became clear that in spirit and execution "The Incredibles 2" was becoming more like the competent but uninspired nearly straight to DVD sequel like "Cars 2" and "Cars 3."
While I think they made some very smart plot choices such as picking up right where the original left off I wish they had taken more creative risks. Again it just felt like they were taking it easy, slapping together a ton of great if somewhat uninteresting action sequences and relying more heavily then they needed to on the original.
Though they left the door open for a third film - and beyond - I think it would be sad to keep it going. Its huge financial success belies its many creative misses.
God's Not Dead (2014)
As a Christian I'd like to like this movie
...But it's very, very hard to.
I really had no interest in seeing this movie but sat down with my oldest daughter to watch it since she said she was interested. Keep an open mind, I thought.
As a believer, I have to admit I struggle with so-called "Christian" movies. Clearly a movie called "God's Not Dead" intends to be heavy- and ham-handed about its message. It was fated to be transparently faux inspirational, to stir hearts and minds with its flimsy and lightweight plot and story.
"God's Not Dead," about a Christian college student going tete-a- tete with a learned, literate Atheist philosophy professor to theoretically defend the proposition that God is, indeed, not dead - something the professor, played by the fairly unremarkable Hercules, Kevin Sorbo, apparently resigned to these kinds of roles, wants to force all students in his class to commit to, lest they waste their time concerned with the "problem" of God.
Instead, he and the Christian student, played by Shane Harper, get into a somewhat milquetoast attempt at an apologetic debate over the existence of a divine creator. Giving the student 3 20 minute sessions to convince the other students that God is not dead, the professor starts to slither away from the debate somewhat early in the process - by the 2nd debate he's kind of checked out from serious argument. He never seems to put up a particularly convincing fight and seems to devolve into more of a God-hating caricature than someone seriously debating the nature and existence of God.
As a committed believer I'm trying to determine what the creators of this film are driving at. As a non-believer or an Atheist would this film convince me that God is not dead? Certainly not. As a serious Christian apologist, would this film provide tangible argumentative fuel for me? Certainly not. As a Christian believer, would or should I find serious inspiration for my faith in the film's message? Not likely.
See that's the problem with most "Christian" movies - they're trying too hard to be deliberately "Christian," to be vaguely and self-consciously inspirational, and not trying particularly hard to be art. Art is hard. Art takes a serious, concentrated, thoughtful effort. In movies like this, like the much worse "Facing the Giants" (which basically has one very well done scene), the also worse "Fireproof," they're grasping at a series of Christian film tropes. Ultimately it tends to come as cloying and impotent.
Creating a serious Christian apologetical film would take far more intellectual firepower - from both the pro and contra sides of the aisle - than what's on display here and even if such firepower were accessible I'm not sure I'd see the point of a filmed debate, unless it were some kind of documentary. To make an artful film about why God exists needs an entirely different tack to be convincing. Being brute and heavy-handed with the material - again, very typical of Christian films - just leaves everything and everyone wanting.
While I would say "God's not Dead" is better than most Christian films I've seen - and that's a pretty low bar admittedly - it's far from a touchstone representing a significant shift in it as a serious art form. The acting overall is better (Sorbo, Harper, Cain, and some others are generally what I'd call competent and sometimes more than competent; not standout great but competent) but there's still some excruciatingly bad amateurs in the mix - including some cast members of "Duck Dynasty" who are inexplicably present to muck things up (I'm guessing they chipped in some money to help finance the movie?). The Christian rockers the Newsboys also show up for the faux- inspirational denouement of the film, again somewhat inexplicable plot elements. These amateurs tend to be poison for Christian movies and make it even harder to take them all that seriously. I wish they'd try harder to cast professional actors.
All in all, "God's not Dead" is bad, bordering on terrible, with a few minor good points. Rated relative to Christian movies, I'd call it borderline so- so. Decent acting with a dose of really bad acting, a weird and scattered plot, attempts at inspiration that just seem to miss, and a ham-handedness in how it deals with deep and powerful subject matter. Your time and money - as a Christian or not - is otherwise spent better elsewhere.
Stranger Things (2016)
An amazing and enormously entertaining adventure-mystery
It inevitably seems a little silly to pile on the accolades for "Stranger Things," Netflix's well-crafted long-form horror/mystery/adventure TV show, but I can't really help myself.
It didn't take long after getting into the first episode to sense what seemed like "Stranger Things" main set of cues: JJ Abrams' well done homage to '70s-'80s era Steven Spielberg sci-fi/alien movies, "Super 8."
There are a number of similarities between "Stranger Things" and "Super 8": A cluster of really tight male best friends; a central activity that they focus on (D&D vs. Movie-making), a small Midwestern town, a sheriff, a girl, and a vast government conspiracy that involves a supernatural monster.
Stylistically they're also not that different, but where "Super 8" wasn't really allowed because of time constraints to expound as deeply on its thematic elements, "Stranger Themes" as kind of a long-form TV novel, has room to range on its big themes: the '80s, the supernatural, horror elements (though not overdone), and crazy government experiments and conspiracies gone awry. "Stranger Things" also focuses more tightly on the darker supernatural "horror" elements, but in a manner that is much softer than the "torture porn"-type intensity of today's horror films (though intense horror films have been around since at least the '70s of course). If anything it seems comparatively tame.
The first season story arc without giving too much away is about peeling away the onion, so to speak, of the real goings on of a secret government lab - yep - just outside of town. Matthew Modine plays a charismatic, shadowy central role as the lab's head. As the series moves along we learn more and more about the lab and what's really going on there. The disappearance of Will Byers - one of the members of this cluster of friends - in the first episode opens a series of questions that have to be answered throughout the story to find what - or who - happened to young Will.
All the actors are quite good - young and old, but David Harbour as the small-town sheriff with a past Jim Hopper is certainly the best in terms of total characterization. Winona Ryder as the somewhat crazed and manic mother of Will and older brother Jonathan who loses her son to - no one really knows yet - is a good fit. Her voice and mannerisms work well for a mother that is on the frayed edges of sanity after losing her son to forces that seem too bizarre to reconcile with anything remotely resembling normal circumstances.
The cast of young boys are all great, with the lispy friend Dustin played by Gaten Mattazaro as the most stand-out and lovable loyal live-and-die friend of the group. Millie Brown as the escaped lab patient "Eleven" is also fantastic in her own way and has very pure acting instincts. If she stays with it as a career, it should be a long one for such a young and precociously gifted actor.
It's hard to talk about the strength of the story and general plot without giving too much away. Suffice it to say "Stranger Things" follows a fairly predictable plot, mixing together ample government conspiracies with darkly supernatural elements and, perhaps best of all, a monster from a creepy parallel universe temporarily attached to our present reality.
The '80s synth intro and even neon-like lettering of the series title was a seductive draw for children of the '80s like me (well I was born in 1970 but obviously grew up in the '80s too). It seems clear the creators played on this bit of nostalgia without getting too heavy-handed about it - there's ample pop culture references throughout. Ultimately the story, direction, and characters shine and their ability to maintain a strong story line and focus that sucks you in from one episode to the next (yes, we binge-watched it in 2 sittings over 2 days) is typical of modern streaming TV series that I enjoy like "Stranger Things," "Longmire," and "Bosch." (among others).
Like a good book, "Stranger Things" is hard to put down. If for some crazy reason you haven't seen it, you will certainly enjoy it.
Match (2014)
Funny, touching, and well done
Patrick Stewart flies in this - for him - very quirky role, a somewhat over-the- top, deliberately isolated, and often rather silly and kinetic aging ballet teacher at Julliard.
Playing Tobias (Tobi) Powell, he's lived around the world and pretty much seen it all. He's been on a million adventures, slept with a million people, lived the prototypical and seemingly enviable life of a globe-trotting artiste - a ballet dancer who many years before blew out a muscle that kept him off the stage permanently. Now he teaches ballet at the world-renowned school of music, theater, and dance in New York City, Julliard. Settled into a quiet, out-of-the- way if funky ethnic neighborhood in Manhattan, Tobi's on the comfortable down slope of a long career in the arts.
Inserted into his comfortable world are two people who want to learn about his life and the history of ballet - at least, that's what Tobi is lead to believe initially. That's of course just the beginning of the story. Though the many spoilers give away the plot, I won't here. Better to discover it for yourself.
Carla Gugino and Matthew Lillard as the seemingly mismatched married couple Lisa and Mike Davis, are contrasting sides of the same coin. Mike is brutish, somewhat taciturn, forceful. Lisa is sweet, lovely, kind, thoughtful. They each in their own way lend powerfully to the story.
Lillard is surprising in his role - he often plays pretty silly, crazy, and ridiculous characters himself, but here he is the straight man. In this particular role, it's ideal. He does well.
Gugino is very good as the wife, crushed and withered by difficult circumstances and history between she and Mike. She comes across gently, carefully exposing her many wounds to Tobi who frequently meets her halfway in her moment of crisis.
But, ultimately, this is a story of redemption. In this respect all characters come back together in funny, heart-wrenching, and unexpected ways.
And what can be said of Patrick Stewart as Tobi? Wow. Just wow. He is really so very, very good. He's incredibly silly at times - saying crazy and really inappropriate things, but almost always hilariously. It's often due to nervousness but he's really kind of an ADD case, blurting out at times brilliantly absurd comments about love, lust, sex, and all kinds of people. He's really, really funny.
He's also incredibly poignant. He has a huge heart, is loving and sweet, ridiculous and silly, over-the-top and flamboyant. He encapsulates all that you expect an artist to be. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't be enormously entertained by Stewart's performance in this film.
"Match" is an insightful film about the twists and turns hidden in the life we think we've lead, about the decisions we've made, about maybe what we've left behind or left undone. Well worth a watch.
Bosch (2014)
A very well-done cop drama
I've always been a big fan of hard-boiled detective fiction - i.e., Chandler, Hammett, the Black Mask, etc. Michael Connelly's Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch follows slyly in the footsteps of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, hung with a slightly modern glow that comes with a contemporary version of the Los Angeles landscape - different, but not all that different from the LA in the novels of Chandler.
Yes, Connelly's fiction is of the formulaic page-turning variety, but there's that occasional quip, occasional string of sentences and words that redeems it out of the pulp fiction dregs, just as Chandler and Hammett occasionally veered into what might be considered Literature-with-a-capital-L. Of course I think Chandler was frequently quite drunk when he wrote and it often showed. Connelly's cool hand at the word processor is a lot less erratic - though I'll always hold a certain fondness for Chandler for being, along with Hammett, largely responsible for creating the genre of hard-boiled detective fiction.
Translating Bosch to the screen isn't such a terribly difficult thing to do as creative endeavors go. The character of Harry Bosch is, after all, very well understood and defined already. And there are dozens if not hundreds of plots, sub-plots, and stories already in the novels that he can easily recall for the purposes of creating the scripts for this Amazon series.
That said, executing on any creative endeavor in itself and executing well is a very, very tough thing to do. I have immense admiration for all the cast and crew and that Amazon has not given what could indeed be a cheap, lousy imitation of the novels' characters and characterization that lacks the guttural instincts, rhythms and feel of the world of police work, specifically the world of the homicide detective.
After watching 2 seasons now I think I can safely rate "Bosch" a solid 9 among police procedurals. Sure, they're all OVER TV - there's probably at least a half-dozen plus "cop shows" on TV in any given TV season and a few dozen shows running daily in syndication across the cable landscape. Still "Bosch" manages to escape many of the "me too" rhythms of most cop shows, probably because the stories tend to follow a season-long instead an episodic arc. The seasons basically follow the expected story arc of an entire novel.
The biggest pitfall for translating any show that comes from a well-established series of novels is of course from the traps that could kill it: Notably - and obviously - missing the mark with the titular character. There's little mistaking however that Titus Welliver's calm intensity and understated humor as Harry Bosch are about perfect. He has a believable gruffness and directness, as Bosch did in the books. It's a great and canny casting - one of many very excellent casting choices they made for this series. I also like Harry's long- suffering sartorial partner, Jerry Edgar ("J Edgar," get it?), a lot.
I won't bother diving into the details of the entire series or any one season. There's a lot of great story there and it's fairly addictive from episode to the next. I defy you not to fly through 3-5 shows at a whack, at least.
Very much looking forward to season 3 but I'm guessing I'll have to wait a while. Such are the pitfalls of streaming TV shows - you get to cap off the entire season quickly but then you're waiting often an entire year and longer for a new season.
In any case, well done Amazon and the cast and crew who put the show together so profoundly well.