A Quiet Place, along with Heredity holds the distinction of being one of 2018's "smart horror movies". While I have not seen Heredity and can not speak to its merits first hand, I would say that A Quiet Place holds less in common with 2017's much praised "smart horror movie" Get Out, then it does with the work M. Night Shymalan, particularly Signs and The Happening. John Krasinski directed the film, co-wrote the screenplay, and stars opposite his real life wife Emily Blunt, as parents trying to keep their children safe after the world is invaded by vicious sightless monsters (probably aliens but this is never made explicit) who track their pray by sound. One of the reason's Krasinski's clan the Abbotts manage to survive is likely because their oldest child Regan (Millicent Simmonds, a young deaf actress who is quite good, and I hope she can continue to find parts in the future) can not hear and the family can communicate easily by sign language.
Hold up in a well appointed farm in what is apparently upstate New York, 400 something days after the start of the invasion, the family awaits the birth of their fourth child, the third child having been killed in the opening minutes of the movie. Babies cry, cry's attract the monsters, so various elaborate precautions are being taken to deal with that reality. There is also some strain in the family, principally on the part of Regan who blames herself for her siblings death. Arguably not much happens in this movie until rather late in its running time, the film is largely about mood, largely about the absence of sound. I of course saw this at home so my experience did not benefit from seeing it with an audience, and I am sure that in early crowded showings the tension in the theater was palpable. Unfortunately that tension did not quite translate into a home viewing, but this is still a strong film, its variations on apocalyptic scenarios sufficiently satisfying for its 90 minute length. I also want to congratulate Krasinski for making a film that can not be followed by only half watching and playing on ones phone, a big movie watching pet peeve of mine. ***1/2
Monday, December 10, 2018
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Four Christmases (2008)
Four Christmases turns ten this year and there is a reason that it hasn't become a Christmas classic, it's not very good. The story of a couple (Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon) who for years have meticulously avoided spending Christmas with their four divorced parents, but weather conditions cancel their flight to Fiji so they might as well get the ritual over with. This movie maybe could have been fun, but for the most part it is not. A couple of Vince Vaughn's line readings made me laugh, but over all the humor is surprisingly gross and unfunny. This film starts with Vaughn and Witherspoon engaged in pre intercourse role play, which has to be a first for a Christmas movie outside of porn. Also these characters and their families are all supposed to live in and around San Francisco, but most of them are very much 'red state' people and do not fit with their supposed surroundings. *1/2
Saturday, December 8, 2018
Christopher Robin (2018)
Considering Disney's recent propensity for live action adaptations of its animated properties, and given the historic success of the Winnie the Pooh franchise for the company, a film like Christopher Robin was perhaps inevitable. They had a clever enough spin to explore as well by featuring a grown up Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor, giving the part a reasonable go) and taking the classic characters out of The Hundred Acer Wood and into mid century London.
The film starts with a young Christopher's "going away party" with his animal friends before heading off to boarding school at around the age of 10 or so. This farewell is followed by a well done montage of the ensuing years in Christopher's life. Shortly after going off to boarding school his father dies, he continues school, then presumably college, starts a career, meets a girl (Hayley Atwell), marries her, must leave his pregnant wife to serve in World War II, comes home to his wife and a four year old daughter he's never meet, and then resumes his career.
The main body of the story picks up around 1952, his daughter (who we see turning three in 1944) is now around 11 and played by Bronte Carmichael. Christopher is working as an efficiency expert at a luggage manufacturer in London, he is under a lot of stress and is trying to find ways to cut cost sufficiently to save that company at a time when luggage sales have apparently fallen off. His task is important, he is trying to save peoples jobs, but this also means missing a weekend at his childhood home with his wife and daughter to stay in the city and work. This perhaps is what triggers his breakdown.
Christopher is visited by Pooh in a park outside his townhouse, debates his own sanity for a bit, and then must take the silly old bear back to Sussex and The Wood to find his missing friends. After reuniting his childhood gang and saving them from the imagined menace of heffalumps and woozles, Christopher then must rush back to London, only without his knowledge Tigger had mislaid some important papers, so then its up to Pooh, the gang, and daughter Madeline to speed them back to London and save the day.
This is that standard story of 'father works too much and must remember what its like to be a kid again' a favored Disney trope the most prominent example of which is probably Mary Poppins. Though the tale is rendered with some ambiguity and childlike sense of wonder, it is also the story of a man who experiences a psychotic break, and takes his family with him down the rabbit hole, in more ways then one. Or at least that's one explanation, otherwise I suppose Christopher could have spent his formative years with 6 mobile talking stuffed animals and similarly communicative, and apparently ageless, rabbit and owl. Or you could save yourself the trouble and not think about it too hard.
It's a sweet enough film, watchable, and very devoted to its source material. Thankfully things never get too manic, Pooh and company should maintain a certain English decorum associated with the time and place of their creation, and not be making pop culture references, I don't think I could have stood that. I didn't like this movie as much as I'd wanted to, but I could appreciate it, restrained, good hearted, forgivably simplistic. Also on some level Brad Garrett's voicing of Eeyore feels like what his entire life has been building towards. **1/2
The film starts with a young Christopher's "going away party" with his animal friends before heading off to boarding school at around the age of 10 or so. This farewell is followed by a well done montage of the ensuing years in Christopher's life. Shortly after going off to boarding school his father dies, he continues school, then presumably college, starts a career, meets a girl (Hayley Atwell), marries her, must leave his pregnant wife to serve in World War II, comes home to his wife and a four year old daughter he's never meet, and then resumes his career.
The main body of the story picks up around 1952, his daughter (who we see turning three in 1944) is now around 11 and played by Bronte Carmichael. Christopher is working as an efficiency expert at a luggage manufacturer in London, he is under a lot of stress and is trying to find ways to cut cost sufficiently to save that company at a time when luggage sales have apparently fallen off. His task is important, he is trying to save peoples jobs, but this also means missing a weekend at his childhood home with his wife and daughter to stay in the city and work. This perhaps is what triggers his breakdown.
Christopher is visited by Pooh in a park outside his townhouse, debates his own sanity for a bit, and then must take the silly old bear back to Sussex and The Wood to find his missing friends. After reuniting his childhood gang and saving them from the imagined menace of heffalumps and woozles, Christopher then must rush back to London, only without his knowledge Tigger had mislaid some important papers, so then its up to Pooh, the gang, and daughter Madeline to speed them back to London and save the day.
This is that standard story of 'father works too much and must remember what its like to be a kid again' a favored Disney trope the most prominent example of which is probably Mary Poppins. Though the tale is rendered with some ambiguity and childlike sense of wonder, it is also the story of a man who experiences a psychotic break, and takes his family with him down the rabbit hole, in more ways then one. Or at least that's one explanation, otherwise I suppose Christopher could have spent his formative years with 6 mobile talking stuffed animals and similarly communicative, and apparently ageless, rabbit and owl. Or you could save yourself the trouble and not think about it too hard.
It's a sweet enough film, watchable, and very devoted to its source material. Thankfully things never get too manic, Pooh and company should maintain a certain English decorum associated with the time and place of their creation, and not be making pop culture references, I don't think I could have stood that. I didn't like this movie as much as I'd wanted to, but I could appreciate it, restrained, good hearted, forgivably simplistic. Also on some level Brad Garrett's voicing of Eeyore feels like what his entire life has been building towards. **1/2
Friday, December 7, 2018
The Front Runner (2018)
Director Jason Reitman's new movie The Front Runner is adapted from political journalist Matt Bai's 2014 book All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid. While it would be difficult to say precisely when American journalism "went tabloid" the week of May 3rd 1987 is as good a date as any and better then most. That was the week that the Miami Herald published a story that the then democratic front runner for president, former Colorado senator Gary Hart was having an extra material affair. The vary next day the name of the alleged mistress (to this day both parities contend that there was no affair) was then 29 year old pharmaceutical rep, model and sometimes actress (screen credits include episodes of Miami Vice and One Life to Live) Donna Rice. In short order Hart's campaign folded and he dropped out of the race.
There are a lot of interesting ideas and issues raised by this story worth exploring, however Reitman's film never feels much beyond surficial in its treatment. I don't feel like I learned much of anything new from this movie, or that it prompted any thoughts I hadn't had before, save maybe one. A point is made in the film that initial poll results after the scandal broke indicated that around 60% of Americans didn't think a politicians extra material escapades had any real bearing on their fitness for office. This seems a fairly consistent number, a majority of Americans don't seem to care much about presidential level adultery, and that has held for both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, an odd bipartisan consensus.
A reasonably educated understanding of history will bear out that presidential infidelity seems to have little effect on job performance. Mostly forgotten presidents like Warren Harding and James Garfield were known adulterers, while Franklin Roosevelt was essentially a practicing polygamist while successfully prosecuting the second world war. The positives and negatives of any given president aside, I don't know quite what to make of American tolerance of executive level fornication, when you hold that next to this nations famed puritanical streak. While The Front Runner lionizes Hart too much, he did seem to have the makings of a potentially very talented president, that road not taken is intriguing to think about. While Hugh Jackman gives a fine performance in the lead, too much of this film felt procedural, ritualistic, in form spot on, but in substance, shallow, lacking in insight and so arguably in purpose. The same might be said for the whole Hart affair. **1/2
There are a lot of interesting ideas and issues raised by this story worth exploring, however Reitman's film never feels much beyond surficial in its treatment. I don't feel like I learned much of anything new from this movie, or that it prompted any thoughts I hadn't had before, save maybe one. A point is made in the film that initial poll results after the scandal broke indicated that around 60% of Americans didn't think a politicians extra material escapades had any real bearing on their fitness for office. This seems a fairly consistent number, a majority of Americans don't seem to care much about presidential level adultery, and that has held for both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, an odd bipartisan consensus.
A reasonably educated understanding of history will bear out that presidential infidelity seems to have little effect on job performance. Mostly forgotten presidents like Warren Harding and James Garfield were known adulterers, while Franklin Roosevelt was essentially a practicing polygamist while successfully prosecuting the second world war. The positives and negatives of any given president aside, I don't know quite what to make of American tolerance of executive level fornication, when you hold that next to this nations famed puritanical streak. While The Front Runner lionizes Hart too much, he did seem to have the makings of a potentially very talented president, that road not taken is intriguing to think about. While Hugh Jackman gives a fine performance in the lead, too much of this film felt procedural, ritualistic, in form spot on, but in substance, shallow, lacking in insight and so arguably in purpose. The same might be said for the whole Hart affair. **1/2
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
A New Leaf (1971)
I don't recall having ever heard of this movie before, but when a source I trust recommend it as one of the funniest movies they'd seen in the last year I gave it a go. After watching A New Leaf I couldn't help but wonder why isn't this movie better known. A critical darling at the time it came out, Gene Siskel had it at #2 on his list of best movies that year, A New Leaf did mediocre business then, but has become something of a cult classic, though a lesser know one, with time.
The film stars Walter Matthau as Henry Graham, a trust fund baby now around 40, who is shocked to find that he has mishandled his inheritance and spent all his money. Lacking skills and terrified of loaming poverty, he embarks on a quest to find a bride upon whose money he can live. He finds one in Henrietta Lowell, played by Elaine May, who also wrote the screenplay and directed the film, very unusual for the time. Henrietta is a botany professor specializing in ferns, and herself the lone inheritor of her family fortune. Henrietta is shy, awkward, and extremely clumsy, and Henry thinks her a perfect mark for his plans, and she is, but he doesn't anticipate the complications that are to follow.
A very dry comedy Walter Matthau is perfect in this, cast against type as a high born eastern seaboard elite, he develops a character that is both very funny and very different from anything else I've seen him do. If all you watched of this movie was Matthau's facial expressions throughout, you'd be thoroughly entertained. May does a great job in her various roles in front and behind the camera, and the supporting cast is suitably off kilter. In many ways this feels like the sort of film that Hal Ashby would make, though a little cleaner. I may have to get my own copy of this one. ****
The film stars Walter Matthau as Henry Graham, a trust fund baby now around 40, who is shocked to find that he has mishandled his inheritance and spent all his money. Lacking skills and terrified of loaming poverty, he embarks on a quest to find a bride upon whose money he can live. He finds one in Henrietta Lowell, played by Elaine May, who also wrote the screenplay and directed the film, very unusual for the time. Henrietta is a botany professor specializing in ferns, and herself the lone inheritor of her family fortune. Henrietta is shy, awkward, and extremely clumsy, and Henry thinks her a perfect mark for his plans, and she is, but he doesn't anticipate the complications that are to follow.
A very dry comedy Walter Matthau is perfect in this, cast against type as a high born eastern seaboard elite, he develops a character that is both very funny and very different from anything else I've seen him do. If all you watched of this movie was Matthau's facial expressions throughout, you'd be thoroughly entertained. May does a great job in her various roles in front and behind the camera, and the supporting cast is suitably off kilter. In many ways this feels like the sort of film that Hal Ashby would make, though a little cleaner. I may have to get my own copy of this one. ****
Monday, December 3, 2018
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Back in 2002 there was a little film that put an ethnic spin on the romantic comedy genera and road that to record breaking success at the box office ($368.7 million gross world wide on a $5 million dollar budget). That film of course was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, it's not so secret ingredient, Greeks. More then a decade and a half later another film has road genera ethnic novelty to great box office heights, so far $237.9 million on a $30 million budget. This film of course is Crazy Rich Asians, and its hook is being a fantasy-fulfillment- romantic-comedy about Asians, principally of the crazy rich variety.
Based on the novel of the same name by Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians is the story of Asian-American economics professor Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) who travels to Singapore with her boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding) to attend his best friends wedding and meet his family. To her, but not the audiences, surprise Nick's family is crazy rich, to the point where Nick is a celebrity in Asia of the most eligible bachelor verity, fortunately he turns out to a real nice and shockingly grounded guy. Now one must put aside the fact that a smart women like Rachel would doubtless have at least googled her boyfriend in the year she is said to have been with him, because the conceit of the film demands it and again this is a wish fulfillment movie. A 'what if the person I legitimately love was secretly super rich as well, therefore I can get to enjoy a lavish lifestyle without having to deal with a sense of guilt that I might only be with this person because of their money' fantasy.
The chemistry between the two leads work, there is a nice arc to the piece, beautiful, lavish sets and locations, a workable secondary story, and a large supporting cast full of likable characters, including recent pop culture arrival Awkwafina as comic relief. I left the film feeling, for the most part, that I really enjoyed these people and I'd like to see them again, and their is legitimate talk of sequel so that's certainly a possibility. It's shocking to think that this is the first major Hollywood film with a majority Asian cast and a contemporary setting since The Joy Luck Club, and that was literally 25 years ago. So this is more novel then it should be and it would be nice to see more of an Asian American cinema in the 21st century. Crazy Rich Asians is a very enjoyable movie, it's smart, funny, well made, heart felt, first rate stuff, and refreshingly different, this will almost certainly by on my top ten list at the end of the year. ****
Based on the novel of the same name by Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians is the story of Asian-American economics professor Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) who travels to Singapore with her boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding) to attend his best friends wedding and meet his family. To her, but not the audiences, surprise Nick's family is crazy rich, to the point where Nick is a celebrity in Asia of the most eligible bachelor verity, fortunately he turns out to a real nice and shockingly grounded guy. Now one must put aside the fact that a smart women like Rachel would doubtless have at least googled her boyfriend in the year she is said to have been with him, because the conceit of the film demands it and again this is a wish fulfillment movie. A 'what if the person I legitimately love was secretly super rich as well, therefore I can get to enjoy a lavish lifestyle without having to deal with a sense of guilt that I might only be with this person because of their money' fantasy.
The chemistry between the two leads work, there is a nice arc to the piece, beautiful, lavish sets and locations, a workable secondary story, and a large supporting cast full of likable characters, including recent pop culture arrival Awkwafina as comic relief. I left the film feeling, for the most part, that I really enjoyed these people and I'd like to see them again, and their is legitimate talk of sequel so that's certainly a possibility. It's shocking to think that this is the first major Hollywood film with a majority Asian cast and a contemporary setting since The Joy Luck Club, and that was literally 25 years ago. So this is more novel then it should be and it would be nice to see more of an Asian American cinema in the 21st century. Crazy Rich Asians is a very enjoyable movie, it's smart, funny, well made, heart felt, first rate stuff, and refreshingly different, this will almost certainly by on my top ten list at the end of the year. ****
Sunday, December 2, 2018
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
I was curious about Bohemian Rhapsody, I thought at the very least the music was sure to be good, but a lot of the early reviews for the films were fairly middling. Subsequently everyone I knew who had actually seen it was pretty enthusiastic about it, so I went. Other then his music I knew very little about Freddie Mercury before the film came out, I knew he was gay, he died of AIDS, and really liked cats. I did not know that he had been (common law) married, I did not know his ethnic background nor that he was a Zoroastrian, this in interesting information.
The movie is kind of cookie cutter, it follows the 'tortured genius' tropes so common to musical biopics, because they are apparently so common to our 'musical geniuses'. However the stakes don't feel overstated, you go to a movie like this because you want to see the musician you like go through their redemptive journey and hear their music. Rami Malek gives a strong performance as Freddie, with logically the real Freddie being dubbed in for the singing. The supporting cast is good, including Malek's real life girlfriend Lucy Boynton (adorable) as Freddie's long time girlfriend and "love of his life" Mary Austin. There is even a cameo role for Mike Meyers as a skeptical record executive who doesn't think that "Bohemian Rhapsody" will ever be the kind of song people bang their heads to in the car.
What the film benefits most from is having a terrific and very logical ending point, Queens performance at Live Aid in 1985, meticulously recreated down to the placement of the Pepsi cups on Mercury's piano. That whole sequence, which must go on around 20 minutes, is what makes the movie worth seeing on a big screen. Bohemian Rhapsody is not innovative like the song from which it takes its name, but it is a satisfying film watching experience. ***
The movie is kind of cookie cutter, it follows the 'tortured genius' tropes so common to musical biopics, because they are apparently so common to our 'musical geniuses'. However the stakes don't feel overstated, you go to a movie like this because you want to see the musician you like go through their redemptive journey and hear their music. Rami Malek gives a strong performance as Freddie, with logically the real Freddie being dubbed in for the singing. The supporting cast is good, including Malek's real life girlfriend Lucy Boynton (adorable) as Freddie's long time girlfriend and "love of his life" Mary Austin. There is even a cameo role for Mike Meyers as a skeptical record executive who doesn't think that "Bohemian Rhapsody" will ever be the kind of song people bang their heads to in the car.
What the film benefits most from is having a terrific and very logical ending point, Queens performance at Live Aid in 1985, meticulously recreated down to the placement of the Pepsi cups on Mercury's piano. That whole sequence, which must go on around 20 minutes, is what makes the movie worth seeing on a big screen. Bohemian Rhapsody is not innovative like the song from which it takes its name, but it is a satisfying film watching experience. ***
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