The Last Movie Star (2017)

Though their are a few later credit's on his IMDb page The Last Movie Star is in effect Burt Reynolds final movie. It's a farewell, an elegy, a mea culpa for a life where many mistakes were made, but where a great deal of public good will still exists towards a man who really embodied what being a movie star could be in the 1970's and 80's. Burt plays a version of himself, a former movie star named Vic Edwards, and the opening sequence of the film really sets up what your getting. It starts with a slightly altered clip of 'Edwards' on a talk show in the 1970's, he's at his prime, he's seemingly joyous, it then cuts to a present day where Vic is in a waiting room at a vets office holding a cancer stricken beagle who has to have put down. Vic's life is morose, but a friend (Chevy Chase) encourages him to accept an invitation to receive a lifetime achievement award at the International Nashville Film Festival, only they have mistaken this for the Nashville International Film Festival, the International Nashville Film Festival turns out to be little more then a bunch of people watching movies in a bar.

The expected recriminations follow and the first part of the film I didn't particularly like, but it really gets into it's own when Vic decides to use the personal assistant he was promised for the weekend (Aril Winter, trying to be as little like Alex Dunphy as possible) to drive him to his home town of Knoxville and take a trip down memory lane and have some misadventures (the real Reynolds was born in Michigan but grew up in Jupiter, Florida). Through his alter ego Reynolds is able to examine his mixed legacy, take a look at the mistakes he made and remind viewers that in spit of that how much we still like him. One of the conceits of the film are dream sequences where Burt is edited into footage from some of his best known films and has conversations with younger versions of himself, from Smokey and the Bandit, and Deliverance. The film isn't in a hurry, Burt has a nice arc, does some solid acting, and its just an enjoyable reminiscence, ending with a shot of Burt's roughish smile. Not a great movie, but a movie I'm glade exists. ***

Blackfish (2013)

Sometimes these very straight forward CNN produced documentaries can be really effective and affecting. Blackfish makes a strong case against the keeping of Orca's aka Killer Whale's in captivity. Focusing principally on a male Orca named Tilikum, who was kept in captivity almost all of his life at various aquatic parks, the film tells of the horrible suffering and conditions of captive Killer Whales, and of the deaths and injuries of trainers over the decades. These whales, mostly well disposed towards humans in the open waters, and even capable of displaying a fondness for them in captivity, simply aren't meant to locked up, and in cramped conditions and forced to do regular shows for tourists, sometimes they just crack. The talking heads are principally former SeaWorld trainers who expresses regret at participating in the exploitation of these very intelligent and graceful beasts. This is pretty gripping, sometimes rather intense viewing, I got to see it on the big screen as part of a local documentary festival and am confident that seeing these animals closer to their actual size added to the viewing experience. ***1/2

Deliverance (1972)

Four Atlanta suburbanites decide to go canoeing on an isolated river in northern Georgia which is soon to be turned into a lake as a result of a new dam. The quartet take a journey into their own collective "heart of darkness" in this iconic film of the early 70's which launched a number of careers, including Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty (Jon Voight is the only then name in the cast). Based on a the 1970 novel of the same name by the poet James Dickey, I didn't expect the film to be this realistic. From what I knew of the film I was expecting essentially a horror movie with a veritable army of inbreed southern backcountry folk laying sage to our protagonists, the movie is richer then that. It is a study of human weakness and strength, of hubris's, ego, moral compromise, and the will to survive. There is more of an epilogue to the thing then I had expected and I liked its interest in gray area's. There is some gorgeous back country scenery and some thrilling and intense bits, its got a lot going for it but I couldn't quite love it. I was expecting to be more harrowed, for it to be more emotionally engulfing, and as a result of this being a smarter and more nuanced then I was expecting I didn't get the emotional pile drive I was bracing for, and so for all its strengths I was a little disappointed. ***1/2

Beyound the Black Rainbow (2010)

After my recent viewing of the 2018 film Mandy I became quite curious to see other films helmed by its director Panos Cosmatos. It turns out that Cosmatos has only one other feature film directing credit, the 2010 Canadian production Beyond the Black Rainbow. Rainbow has many similarities to Mandy, the slow pacing, the violence (though far less of it in this case), science fiction/ fantasy story elements, and both films are set (only principally in Rainbow's case) in the year 1983. In contrast to my viewing experience of Mandy I saw Beyond the Black Rainbow at home, seeing something in the theater, epically when the work is often slow, basically forces continued attention, something I was not able to maintain in this home viewing. I am generally very opposed to multi tasking when viewing a film for the first time, but that was the only way I could get through this movie because it was just so grindingly slow, and I have a far greater tolerance for slow movies then seemingly most people. As a result I mostly skimmed Black Rainbow, so I may have missed some important plot points but I think I got the gist of the thing.

The movie is about a teenage girl (Eva Allan) kept at a research facility run by a vaguely Scientology type group who is testing her for psychic abilities. Eva has a sadistic over sear (Michael Rogers) who at first I thought might be her father, but glancing at the Wikipedia page he is not. The relationship between Eva and Michael is much like the relationship between 11 and Matthew Modine in Strangers Things, even though this movie pre-dates that show by half a decade. The film also evokes a number of other movies and directors in motifs and images, major among these are 2001: A Space Odyssey, Day of the Dead, and the work of David Lynch. The movies got an interesting look and the pacing works at times, but on the whole there is just much to much of it, and far too little happens over too long a period of screen time to maintain my interest. Cosmatos certainly has his tropes and areas of film making interest and I'd be curious to see him continue to explorer those, at least one more time, so given the blahaness of Beyond the Black Rainbow as a film viewing experience for me the best spin I can put on it is that with Mandy at least we know he's improving as a director. *1/2 (I would give this * but I'm giving him some credit for the visuals and overall oddness).

When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Closing up another embarrassing gap in my movie knowledge, I of course was quite familiar with When Harry Met Sally in the abstract, I recall for instance a running gage about it on an episode of Dave's World back in the mid 90's. Perhaps the ultimate married persons romantic comedy everything works in When Harry Met Sally, the story, the writing, the directing, the humor, the pacing and most of all the performances. Meg Ryan is of course adorable, Billy Crystal utterly charming, Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby great in support. It's an enjoyable stroll of a movie, with just enough tension to keep from being too pat and too safe. Complete with a solid affecting arc, and the snippets from (actors playing) older couples telling true stories of how they got together is a nice little extra. Seldom is a romantic comedy truly great, but this one is. ****

You Were Never Really Here (2017)

Based on the 2013 novella of the same name by Jonathan Ames, You Were Never Really Here stars Joaquin Phoenix as Joe, a New Yorker whose traumatic childhood and war experiences produced profound psychological stress which he channels through his job rescuing women from human trafficking. On a job to rescue the daughter of a New York state senator things take an unexpected turn and Joe finds himself forced on the run, with everyone he loves in life in potential danger. At first I was not liking this movie, its more then a little jarring and scant on the narrative details, but you spend enough time with this character and the creepy world he forces himself to enter and the mood of the piece has an affect. The scene of the rescue of the little girl from the townhouse "club'', shown as black and white security camera footage, with the 50's song 'Angel Baby' playing in the background, that's a unique type of creepy. The emotional distance of the characters in the piece seems fitting, what a difficult world, what a trail to attempt to do good there, the long term impact on the human soul of seeing the things Joe must have seen, I can hardly even fathom. There is a fair amount of Taxi Driver in evocation here, though kind of inverted, but You Were Never Really Here is still a unique work, with a topicality that you fear is just beneath the surface and likely more prevalent then one could stand to contemplate. ***1/2

The Dead Don't Die (2019)

The single biggest question your likely to have at the end of  The Dead Don't Die, the new, extremely dry and fatalistic zombie comedy from veteran indie director Jim Jarmusch, is why make this movie? That's a question Rolling Stone asked him, his replay "I just wanted to do something silly." The hipster director has had a historically slanted perspective on genera types, he's made a psychedelic western with Johnny Depp (Dead Man) a Samurai/mobster cross (Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) and even a vampire love story (The Only Lovers Left Alive). So while Jarmsuch is on record as not being much of a zombie fan, there is a certain odd logic in his making this movie.

The film boasts a large cast of recognizable names, many of them Jarmusch regulars, including Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Tilda Swenton, and Iggy Pop. Selena Gomez of all people is in this. The interplay of the various performers is the most interesting part of the movie, there is a very comfortable almost family feel radiating from the cast. There is some political humor, the reanimating of corpses comes about a side effect of the Earth being thrown off its axis as a result of "polar fracking", and Steve Buscemi's farmer Miller wears a "Make America White Again" hat.

When it comes to the zombies themselves the main joke of the film may be that Jarmusch really doesn't have anything new to say about zombies, he knows that, and that's why its funny. Being a comedy one really can't help but think a bit of Shaun of the Dead, but this is really more of a George Romero nod then anything. It's set in Pennsylvania, the opening scene is in a cemetery, the zombies are drawn to things they did in life, the social commentary has been done before, and that's Jarmusch's commentary on that. You follow various small groups, and most everybody dies, the film leans into its fatalism and gallows humor, there is a certain detachment and bland acceptance of doom, which the more I think about it the more I like it.

What is most distinctive about the film is its forth wall breaking, which I had heard about before and  wasn't sure how much I'd like, but I came to find it rather endearing. A meandering and winkingly lite apocalypse film The Dead Don't Die is likely an acquired taste. It's a zombie movie that comes across bemused by the fact that it is a zombie movie, and while it's seemingly structured as any other run of the mill zombie pic, in it's very low key way it manages to almost transcend what its parodying, and then doesn't because that's funnier. ***

Icarus (2017)

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Icarus is a round about kind of story, I was frankly bored by the first 30 minutes but was riveted over the course of the following hour and a half. Film maker Bryan Fogel was a committed amateur competitive cyclist and one time big fan of Lance Armstrong. Disillusioned when Armstrong finally admitting his doping, and convinced that his best performing competitors in amateur races were doing the same, Fogel hit upon an idea for a documentary. The director decided that he too would dope, see how much his performance improved and if he could get away with it and film the whole thing. In process of so doing Fogel came into contact with Greigory Rodchenkov, head of the Russian Anti-Doping Lab, who quite suspiciously given his official job, offered to help Fogel come up with an undetectable drug regiment to beat the system. Lots of Skype conversations and trips to one another's countries followed and Fogel and Rodchenkov became friends, and good thing too because when the more the proverbial noose started to descend on Rodchenkovs neck following the fallout from the Sochi Games Greigory needed to get out of Russia in a hurry.

Fogel helped Rodchenkov get out of the country, and subsequently get his story out and amnesty in the United States. The Russian doctor snuck a lot of incriminating files out with him and is the man most responsibility for The Russian Federations effective ban from the 2016 summer games. Today Greigory Rodchenkov is in the federal witness protection problem. While Rodchenkov certainly did some unethical things it is hard not to like him as he has a mostly upbeat attitude and quirky sense of humor in spite of everything. A one time athlete himself Rodcenkov wanted more then anything to be around sport, that directed his career trajectory and the force of institutional gravity pulled him to gaming the system. While Russian meddling has sadly become something of a political issue in the United States, if you divorce it from left or right and simply look at what Putin and company were willing to condone, up to and including murder, to keep an edge on sporting competition it should make you shudder. A unique and fascinating film, sport related documentaries are not usually my kind of thing but this one really won me over. ****

Brightburn (2019)

It's 2006 and Kansas farm couple Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle (David Denman) Breyer are struggling with infertility. Then one night during a meteor shower it seems as though their prayers have been answered, they discover a baby boy secreted in a space pod of unknown origin that crashes on their property. The couple name the boy Brandon, tell their friends and family that they adopted him and raise him there in Brightburn County, withholding from the child his true origins. Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) turns out to be a nice, extremely bright child, and though socially awkward he seems a good egg, that is up until puberty starts to kick in, and the space pod his parents hid under the barn starts to call out to him. Brandon learns the truth and his behavior starts to change real fast, never sick or injured in his life new abilities starts to manifest and the draw backs of a frustrated adolescent gaining Godlike powers quickly become apparent.

Brightburn quite obviously is a revisionist take on the Super Boy story, only here instead of getting Clark Kent, Ma and Pa end up with something closer to Damion from The Omen. At a nice lean 90 minute running time Brightburn works quite well, its consistently interesting, evenly paced, nicely structured, well acted, and has a couple interesting ideas. The story was written by Brian and Mark Gunn, brother and cousin respectively of Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn. Already grossing well over twice its modest budget the movie has some real Hollywood muscle behind it and at the end teases potential future films, perhaps even a cinematic universe of its own, not that we need another but I'm sure the studio would be happy to have it. There are some real graphic and disturbing images in this film, it ain't for kids. But smarter then much of the summer fair there is an audience out there to appreciate the creativeness of it's off center sensibilities. I did.  ***1/2

Women in Love (1969)

For decades the British author D. H. Lawrence's 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was considered 'The Dirty Book' from the roaring 20's to Mad Men times and beyond this was the book you kept in a brown paper bag and read secretly. My first hand knowledge of Lawerence's work was essentially zero, and given the reputation of the Chatterley book I assumed a certin naughtlness was likely inherent in all of his work. Women in Love is based on the 1920 Lawrence novel of the same name, which in turn is a sequel to his 1915 book The Rainbow which followed three generations of the Brangwen family of Nottinghamshire from the 1840's to 1905. The two central characters of Women in Love, sisters Ursula and Gudrun would have been little girls at the end of the first book, here they are women in their 20's, both still living at home, one an teacher one an artist.

Women in Love followes the sisters romances with two best friends, a school inspecter name Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates) and the heir to the local coal mine Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed). Urulsa (Jennie Linden) becomes fascinated by Rupert while Gudrun (Glenda Jackson) hooks up wit Gerald. While the film is very sexual and even graphic in subject matter with a fair bit of nudity, its not all about titillation, it's powerful as a character study of very human people, masses of contradictions and mixed motives. Jackson won a best actress Oscar for this and it is deserved, but all four central performances are top notch.

For much of the story nothing much happens, which is fine because the writing and the performances are so good, but there is one moment that really stands out to me. It is the death of some supporting characters, a young couple who drown during a picnic when the sneak off to go skinny dipping. The suddenness of the event, so unexpected, seemingly out of nowhere, it captures so well how those things go. The life altering tragedies are often sudden and unexpected, yet the consequences so permanent. The death of the couple spins the story off into an entirely new direction, things could have been so much different if they hadn't died, and the powerful truth of this in emblematic of a film and story that is consistently profound in its plummeting of the experience of living. A very fine work indeed. ****

Charlies Angel's Full Throttle (2003)

Not that 2001's Charlie's Angel's really took its self that seriously but Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle has really leaned into its identity of self satire. More stylistically heightened then the original, there are more set pieces, more cameo's, more sexy outfits, more all around ridiculousness. One of the things I most remember form the films original ad blitz back in 2003 was its emphasis on then 40 year old co-star Demi Moore's bikini body, I guess there was a novelty at that time thinking of a woman looking that good at that age, now days it seems par for the course, some of the best looking women in Hollywood are in their 40's. I think I might have enjoyed Full Throttle marginally better then the original film given just how tongue in check it is, it's disposable but mostly harmless. Bernie Mac takes over from Bill Murray as Bosley and there is a rather young Shia LaBeouf here as well. This was another movie that I got from a DVD mystery pack. **

Charlie's Angels (2001)

When we moved my grandpa up from California to Boise in 2009 he brought with him a couple score VHS tapes and 2 DVD's. The DVD's were almost certainly given to him and I doubt he ever watched either, one of them was American Beauty, which I recently re-watched and have mixed feelings about the extent to which it held up, and the other Charlie's Angels. So I recently watched Charlie's Angels, it of course is based on the 1970's ABC television program of the same name that has been dismissed, and not altogether inaccurately, as T & A TV. I've watched that "crime of the week" series a scattering of times over the decades, I'm not a big fan but enjoy its 1970'sness. Given the proliferation of TV show to movie adaptations that really took off in the 1990's a Charlie's Angels movie was all but inevitable.

Among the producers on the project was Drew Barrymore, who costars along with Lucy Lu as one of the Angles, and who helped recruit Cameron Diaz for the project. According to the little booklet that came with the DVD Barrymore sold Diaz on the project as a kind of feminist action film, though if somehow not obvious before it's pretty clear watching the film that it was designed for the male gaze. It's harmless enough fun, directed by a guy named McG who had been a commercial and music video director and since has done a few more movies and produced a number of TV shows including The O.C, and Supernatural. Filmed in 2000 but not released until 2001 the film is of the "extreme esthetic" that characterizes the first few years of the new millennium, a kind of 90's cultural backwash which I am oddly fascinated by given those were the year's of my LDS mission so it's this weird cultural blind spot for me, it's of my lifetime but its like going into the past as my first hand knowledge is so limited.

John Forsyth was still alive so he could reprise his off camera, voice only role as Charlie in this. Bill Murray is Bosley, and he's basically just coasting. Tim Curry and Crispin Glover, oddly, are in the movie to, as are a couple of people who would go on to be much better know, Sam Rockwell, and Melissa McCarthy in a very bit part. The movie kind of tries to have an approximation of a serious plot, ironically part of that involves efforts to stop the theft of a voice identification software that "will end privacy as we know it", and while the Angels succeed their good work would be undone a month or two later by passage of The Patriot Act. Really a nothing of a movie, but the girls look good and seem to be having fun. **

Mandy (2018)

Mandy is a movie that I would probably need to watch a second time to figure out just how I feel about it, but it has a specificity of authorial vision I just can't dismiss. It's a pastiche of the existential horrors of 1980's suburban parents, biker gangs, drugs, sex, cults, Satanism, fantasy novel cover art. Set in the Pacific Northwest of 1983 Nicolas Cage is a logger who lives peacefully with his new age artist girlfriend Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) in a pretty nice cabin in the woods. Peacefully until a cult, with the aid of a drugged up, undead gang of bikers intrude into that peace, forever shattering it. This movie is really two movies, the first half is a slow build to the incident at the cabin in the woods, the second half a wild ride of revenge where Cage, who spends the first half of the film largely subdued, goes totally coked out, at one point literally. It's a puzzler, but the tone of unease and hyper-reality that runs through it transcends mere gimmick. I'm not sure exactly what director Panos Cosmatos was trying to say, but it's certainly intriguing. ***

Godzilla King of the Monsters (2019)

There is really not much to Godzilla King of the Monsters. The movie has one interesting idea (which I can't get into with out spoiling it's most intriguing plot point) and a couple of interesting visuals, but that's really all. If you enjoy giant monster fights, there are some decent enough ones here but  nothing much to dramatically support them. It's a movie filled with forgettable Roland Emmerich type characters enacting forgettable Roland Emmerich type arcs (a strained parent child relationship you say, wow how innovative). The moments that are supposed to make you bond with the characters are too cut and paste and the characters themselves are just too thin to warrant any investment, the strongest emotional reaction they elicited from me was a groan. The pacing was off, events escalate so quickly that any attempts at establishing stakes gets buried under an avalanche of spectacle. The 2014 Godzilla was just smart enough, and Kong Skull Island had a nice off center sensibility, that they seemingly promised more from this movie, but it just didn't deliver, though perhaps next years Godzilla vs. Kong will. Aggressively mediocre to the point of being hard to sit through, I actually considered leaving the theater mid movie, and I've never left a theater mid movie. *

Godzilla vs The Sea Monster (1966)

In preparation for my viewing of the new movie Godzilla King of the Monsters I decided that I wanted to first see an actual, honest to goodness, cheesy, awkwardly dubbed, Japanese Godzilla movie of the middle of last century. I'd never seen one before, only portions on episodes of Mystery Science Theater and the American cut of the original 1950's Godzilla, the one where they edited in Raymond Burr. Those don't count, I wanted the complete genuine article, and I got it in Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster, alternately titled Ebirah, Horror of the Deep.  Released in 1966 I believe Sea Monster was the 6th of 7th movie in the Godzilla series and it just kind of drops you in. Like the Marvel or Medea cinematic universes there is a lot of history and a lot going on, and sometimes not knowing everything is more entertaining then coming in fully briefed.

I liked the scale of this movie, it was something of filler in the franchise, there were no big city skyscraper attacks in this one. The bulk of the action is set on Letchi island, a fictional landmass on which a terrorist organization called The Red Bamboo is attempting to construct nuclear weapons. The island is isolated and guarded from intruders by Ebirah a giant lobster/prawn creature, who the bad guys get around through the aid of a solution made from native fruit that repels the sea monster, they simply spry the stuff from their boats when coming and going from the island. However a boat not so equipped, and ignorant of Ebriah is capsized and the four men aboard wash ashore on Letchi. The four men are a charmingly odd grouping, a young man trying to find his brother who disappeared in the nearby waters, a professional thief, and two rejects form a dance competition (it was the 60's, the temptation to work a dance competition into this movie was apparently too great). I wont bother explaining here how those four ended up on that boat together, but suffice it to say it was entertaning.

The group notice the presence of the terrorists, decide wisely to hide from them but soon are joined by woman named Daiyo (Kumi Mizuno, apparently a horror film regular in Japan at the time). Daiyo had escaped from Red Bamboo after being abducted with a number of others from nearby Infant Island, the terrorists had been using the abductees for slave labor. The four men decide to help Daiyo. Infant Island however is the home of Mothera, who the natives worship as a god and who protects them when she is not sleeping, which unfortunately is most of the time. So of course Mothera eventually shows up, as does Godzilla who was apparently hibernating on the island after the events of a previous film. There is also a giant condor creature who stops by for a fight.

I want to see more of these Kaiju movies. Godzilla vs The Sea Monster is charmingly odd and quirky, I really enjoyed it. It's silly and 60's, plays it just straight enough but still tongue in cheek. I'm not sure camp is the right word, its probably a shad or two shy of that, it's kitschy but really endearing, which is more then I can say of the newest Godzilla movie which will be the subject of my next review. ***

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Frank Oz directed this film adaptation of the musical based on the 1960 tongue-in-cheek B-movie about a killer plant. There are a fair number of changes from the original film, the location is shifted from Los Angeles to the New York City area, the character of Seymour's mother is eliminated, Audrey II is explicitly made an alien plant, and a number of other changes though it remains true to the sprit of the original. This is a fun movie, with some enjoyable songs by Alan Menken and a great supporting cast including Bill Murray, Christopher Guest, John Candy, and Steve Martin (whose dentist musical number is inspired). Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene are the leads, and competent enough singers, R & B vocalist Levi Stubb's work as the voice of giant killer plant Audry II, well its iconic, just fantastic.

The version I saw was 'the directors cut' and apparently it is about 23 minutes longer then the version released in theaters. This version of the film contains the original ending, it is the ending that comes from the musical and in it the killer plants get out of control and start taking over the country like in a period horror movie (like the original film the story is set in the early 1960's, hence the doo-oop music). It's one of those endings that you almost can't believe your seeing what your seeing it's so crazy, but apparently it didn't test well with audiences so they went back and filmed a more conventional ending, which is about the only thing I remember seeing from the theatrical cut, which I caught the very end of on TV 25+ years ago. I'd kind of like to see that version at some point, and would definitely be willing to watch this one again, it's a fun movie, I can't believe it took me so long to see it. ***

Bad Boys (1995)

The Martin Lawrence/ Will Smith police/buddy, action/comedy Bad Boys was the directorial debut of the infamous Michael Bay, it is where the pain began. The movie evidences Bay's real interest in explosions and quick cuts and relative indifference to story and character development. It is a mediocrity in concept that becomes kind of bad in execution. While any number of threads in this film could be explored in relation to how it fails I first have to call out the primary reason it does, that reason is Martin Lawrence. He is awful, his performance is whinny, and unfunny, and tedious and annoying (Will Smith on the other hand is likable, he's always likable, but he wasn't yet a big star and thus is relegated to the secondary lead). Martin Lawrence is so unpleasant and useless on screen that I came to dread whenever he would appear on it, more then once I yelled at him to shut up.

The plot of this movie is just kind of there, as are the set pieces which presumably is what the movie was built around. I don't think 90's action movies date well, I think 80's action movies date better. As action I thought this was a very mediocre movie, as a comedy, I didn't think it was even a comedy. Far too much of the plot is built around a contrivance in which Lawrence has to pretend to be Smith's character, and visa-versa around a witness with a mark on her head played by Téa Leoni, who was the only character here I ever cared about, and then only briefly. There was nothing in this movie for me to latch on to, nothing to care about, nothing to appreciate, nothing good, it was just there. I mean really the best thing I can think of was the set design of a liquor store. While technically competent on a production level Bad Boys is oppressively bland, unfunny and uninteresting, I kind of hated this movie. *

Top Secret! (1984)

Top Secret! is a largely forgotten film by the creative team of Zucker, Abrams and Zucker, best known for their 1980 movie Airplane! which is basically the platonic ideal of the movie spoof. Where Airplane! satirized the disaster movie generally, and in particular the Airport movie franchise of the 1970's, Top Secret! is an odd amalgamation of genera types to send up, its the World War II escape/ espionage film combined with the 'Elvis movie'. Val Kilmer in his first film role plays Nick Rivers, an American rock star who travels to East Berlin as part of a cultural festival, a cultural festival that is being used by elements of the East German high command as a distraction against the forth coming deployment of a new supper weapon with the intent to devastate the NATO fleet off of Gibraltar and re-unite Germany under communist rule. Rivers get's sucked into event after meeting a young woman (Lucy Gutteridge) who is searching for her abducted scientist father (Michael Gough) and the couple end up working with "The French Resistance" to try and break him out.

The movie is quite funny, its got some great gages in it, especially visual ones, a lot of loony stuff with forced perspective and cartoon logic. The song's in the movie are also quite entertaining. While PG it would be rated PG-13 if it came out today, there are a few moments in it that would make me uncomfortable showing it to younger kids. On the whole though Top Secret! gets the genera spoof right, the story should be one that would work reasonable well as a mediocre straight movie, and the jokes well executed and legitimately funny, not just a string of recent pop culture references, a rut the genera fell into in the 00's that has basically killed it. A nice throw back viewing experience. ***

Booksmart (2019)

I was debating between this and Brightburn for which movie I was going to go see on Memorial Day. The deciding factor for me was the critical consensus, the 98% on Rotten Tomato's and the advertisements that stressed "believe the hype". Booksmart is a gross out teen comedy with heart, the Apatow formula that tends to win me over. There is the gender reversal from genera archetype that has been so popular in comedies of recent years, the leads are girls (Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein, both excellent), academic high achievers who decide to make up for four years with no social life by attending a string of parties the night before high school graduation. It's a tried and true episodic formula, well handled, and with a good young cast, many of whom are basically unknown and some of home I expect will go on to healthy careers. I want to take a moment though and point out for praise the performance of one of the more established members of that young cast Billie Lourd, she is hilarious and steals every scene she's in.

Besides being a well done example of its type of movie, good performances, strong writing, there are some other aspects of Booksmart  worth praising. First there is the direction by Olivia Wilde, the actresses directorial debut shows her a natural hand at it, I hope she does more, I'm comfortable saying she is a better director then an actor (I feel the same way about Ben Affleck). Then there is what the movie has to say about the younger generation today. Like Fast Times at Ridgemont High did for Gen X, Booksmart does for iGen. It's a teen comedy yes, so it has its limitations, but on a deeper level I feel like I'm seeing this younger generation the way they see themselves, and that is something I haven't really seen presented in film before. The stereotype of a highly sensitive, easily offended generation has its inverse, and that is a capacity for empathy and inclusion beyond what we have seen from previous generations. It's admirable, and it's reassuring, and that's damn welcome. Every character in this movie ends the film looking better then when you first meet them (with the exception of the serial killer). It's an optimistic movie about a generation people just assume is cynical, and that just really struck a cord with me. To encounter something both hopeful and well done like this, even if it's just a silly comedy, well with the way things are right now that's not nothing. Probably the best new movie I've seen so far this year. ****