The Night Before (2015)

 Long time friend's Seth Rogan, Anthony Mackie, and Joseph Gordan Leavitt decide to observe a tradition one last time and spend Christmas Eve out on the town in Manhattan. Hijinks ensue, they all learn something that helps them grow, and drug dealing angel Micheal Shannon finally gets his wings. Slightly less gross out then the average Rogan comedy, I think because Gordan Leavitt's there. One or two really funny scenes, but mostly its just fine. **

Remember the Night (1940)

 'Remember the Night' has a mediocre first half, but really pulls it off in the second half. Screenplay by Preston Sturges, staring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurry pre 'Double Indemnity'. He's a lawyer, she's a shoplifter he is prosecuting, feeling bad that she will be in prison over Christmas before the trail can resume, he pays her bail and ends up taking her to Indiana to spend Christmas with his family (which has to violate the law, crossing states lines, and eventually they even go into Canada). McMurry's family is charming, but on the way there they make a stop to visit Stanwycks estranged mom, and she completely explains why her character is the way she is. Parts of this are really well done and endearing, parts really aren't, I can see why Sturges decided he needed to start directing his own work. If you watch this be prepared for one of the most racist man servant characters you've ever seen. ***

West Side Story (2021)

What to say about 'West Side Story'?  I've had really mixed feelings on Steven Spielberg's remake of the 1961 Oscar winning movie musical, which in turn was based on the 1957 Tony winning stage musical, which in turn was based on Shakespeare's legendary play 'Romeo and Juliet'.  In my opinion 1961's West Side Story just may the best movie musical of all time, it has a timeless story, great choreography, wonderful cast, every song lands and many are great. There is no way Spielberg could make something more iconic, and he didn't. 

What Spielberg did do is added more context, moved some songs around, fleshed things out via long time collaborator Tony Kushner's screenplay, did things visually you couldn't have done in the 1960's, and tried to make the story better resonate with todays audiences. This was a parietal success. 

The story is already a tragedy universal in nature, two people who love each other kept apart by circumstance. 'Isn't it a shame these two good kids couldn't get together', that works any place and time. Spielberg's film takes that universality and manages to make it feel less universal, not so much something that could happen any place and any time, but something whose happing is supper specific to the time and place in which it is set. 

This is an angrier, more political film, which does not end on the cautiously hopeful coda of the first movie, but feels like the contemporary document it is, lamenting a promise not fully fulfilled. At times the realism of the sets feels off given the musical numbers being played out on them, and Ansel Elgort is to put it simply no Richard Beymer. 

In the films favor is Rachel Zegler, whose just lovely and talented and unlike the equally adorable Natalie Wood didn't need to be dubbed (in fact much of the original cast was dubbed as well). Much of the new material added by Kushner actually works, the character of Tony gets a stronger arc, the absence of parents in the picture plays better, there is more of a sense of menace to the proceedings, especially near the end. Having Rita Moreno return to this property six decades on and casting her as a voice of reason was wonderful. Even converting the character of 'Anybody' from a tom boy type to more of an overt transman works, and much better then I thought it could. 

It is the power of the music that carries both films, they do a great job with it here, it was often quite moving. Spielberg dose a fine job mounting the production numbers, and though I prefer the musical staging in the original feature, this is a septuagenarian doing his first musical, and doing a quality job at it. 

So my biggest problems with this film have to do with subtext, and may not even register with most viewers. The new West Side Story is still one of the best films I've seen all year, but like 'In The Heights' which came out this summer, doesn't feel like it entirely knows what it wants to be as film musical. ***1/2 

Don't Look Up (2021)

 In 2006 a film came out called 'American Dreamz', a broad satire about a George W. Bush like president whose falling approval numbers prompts him to agree to guest host an 'American Idol' type reality show, and the contestant/ terrorist sleeper agent assigned to kill him when he does. While far from a great film that movie captured something so true about the state of our nation at that time, the inane celebrity culture, silly reality television, uninspiring political leadership, and counter productive foreign policy, that it made me feel a little nauseous. 'Don't Look Up' on the other hand, made me want to throw up. 

Adam McKay's new movie dark comedy is about the nations reaction to an approaching comet, whose certain impact would spell the destruction of the human race. While technologically the challenge of destroying the comet before impact seems within our grasp, as a society we may have become too divided and dysfunctional to summon the collective will to do so. 

Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio play the scientists who respectively discover and chart the course of the comet, while Rob Morgan is the government scientist who first takes them seriously. The trio fly to Washington to the meet the nations Palin/Trump like president Meryl Streep and her toddy son / chief of staff Jonah Hill, who basically tell them that for political reasons it's not a good time for a life threating comet, so we'll have scientists we trust more double check your math and get back to you. 

With only 6 1/2 months to go before the impact there is no time to wait, so Lawrence and DiCaprio agree to go on a popular morning show to sound the alarm, where they are overshadowed by the breaking relationship drama of an Ariana Grande type singer played by Ariana Grande. 

The mechanisms of public and government response are slow to get going, but get going they do until the stopping of the impending destruction of the human race comes to be perceived as a partisan political issue, and then things break down again. One asks ones self if a society this short sighted is worth saving. 

The intended metaphor here is for climate change, but it also works for Covid and other things. The celebrity culture and reality television world of 'American Dreamz' 2006 is supplemented 15 years later with the world of social media, and a hyper partisanship that has fractured that celebrity cultural along lines of political identity. On 'the left' the celebs are of little substance, on 'the right' they are the same, but also hold high office and the fate of humanity in their hands.

While taking mild shots at the left this film is not bi-partisan, it's primary focus is on the right, and some times it gets mean, but it's not without a point, the reality denial on the right far, far outpaces in magnitude that on the left. This of course is a point that when you make it, you retrench that denial on the other side, so while the seeming message of the film is we all need to take reality more seriously, it doesn't help that cause, so as consolation gives the left  permission to laugh about how screwed we are. 

The old saying that comedy is tragedy plus time has it's inverse, tragedy is comedy when the time runs out. ***1/2

 

The Gloria's (2020)

 'The Glorias' is a bio-pic of feminist icon Gloria Steinem, it's directed by Julie Taymor so it's kind of arty, including sequences where the four actresses who play Ms. Steinem at various ages talk to each other on a bus, at first I didn't think this worked but it grew on me. Alicia Vikander and Julian Moore play the adult Gloria's. I was familiar with the vague outline of Ms. Steinem's life (who I saw speak live once) but I learned things here, particularly about her early life. Towards the end the movie devolves into something of check list, we've got to touch on X,Y & Z, so the character building is fairly minimal because the film has so much ground to cover. Still there remains a place for such survey course bio-pics, there is something comforting about them. ***

Last Christmas (2019)

 'Last Christmas' he gave you his heart Emilia Clarke, I mean literally you have his heart inside you, your new boyfriends a ghost, that's why he keeps disappearing and none of your friends have meet him. Yes this lousy inverted remake of 'Return to Me' takes George Michaels words literally. This film thought it could coast off of your adorableness Ms. Clarke, well it can't. Also Emma Thompsons Yugoslavian accent is just terrible, like this movie. * 

Last Night in Soho (2021)

Edger Wright started out his directing career making genera send ups like 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz' before moving on to comic adaptations like 'Scott Pilgrim vs. The World' and the screenplays for 'The Adventures of Tintin' and 'Ant-Man'. In 2017 Wright wrote and directed 'Baby Driver' an original heist movie that was more action film then comedy. With 'Last Night in Soho' we see Wright's further evolution, making a psychological thriller that owes much to such 60's films as 'Repulsion' (1965), 'Peeping Tom' (1960) and 'Carnivals of Souls' (1962).  

The 60's homages are very much intentional and appropriate to this film, which is not only partially set in that decade but contains appearances by period beauty's Rita Tushingham, Margaret Nolan and Diana Rigg, the last two in their final film roles. The story concerns a contemporary young woman with a family history of mental illness (Thomasin McKenzie) who moves from her home in rural Cornwall to pursue her dream of studying design at the esteemed London College of Fashion. Personality conflicts with her roommate lead the young woman to seek lodgings off campus, and she rents a room in an old house from an elderly Diana Rigg. 

It is in that room that she starts having vivid dreams of an aspiring young singer back in the mid 60's (Anya Taylor-Joy), and at first these are largely of a rose colored nostalgic heugh, the film has large gorgeous period sets, one even outdoors running for seeming blocks. This vicarious life imparts a new vivacity to Thomasin's generally quite bearing, but then things in the dream world start to get really dark, and we see the underbelly of mod swinging London, and the ways it could exploit young women, ending with images of Taylor-Joy covered in blood. Our leads efforts to now solve a more then half century old murder is given new menace when she believes she see's the killer still alive in the form of Terrance Stamp.

Promotional art for this film, movie posters, the soundtrack album, have been rendered in a very 1960'style, and the movie itself takes elements from the films of the era and successfully rearranges them to create something that feels quite fresh, even while remaining quite rooted in something old. This is definitely a film I will want to re-watch with added focus on the way it was structed, I'll be curious to see how well certain plot elements hold up under increased scrutiny, but as mood piece and evocation of a previous era this movie really works. The fact that it doesn't give the era of it's focus an essay pass, choosing to dwell on just the comforting nostalgia of the past and ignoring the periods blemishes, is very much an asset the movies favor. A really fun and sometimes unexpected theater experience that had a smile of appreciation on my face through much of it. ***1/2