Anna and the Apocalypse (2018)

 'Anna and the Apocalypse' is 'High School Musical' meets 'Shaun of the Dead' in Scotland at Christmas time. This feels like something that should have come out about 10 years before it did, It's actually an expansion on a short film. The plot is nothing exceptional so it's the music that really sells the thing, along with a likable young cast. You should already know if this movie is for you, and if it sounds like it is I say see it. **1/2

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

 It has been some time since I enjoyed a high school set movie as much as I enjoyed 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower'. Stephen Chbosky adapted his own novel for the screen and directed it, ensuring that we get what he wanted to put across. The 1999 novel set in the suburbs of Pittsburg during the early 90's, deals with tough subject matter and was banned from some schools. There is a nice mix of lighthearted and poignant here leading to a meaningful whole, the movie does some tricky things incredibly well, and there's a likable group of character. 

Logan Lerman stars as Charly, going into his freshmen year of high school friendless after the suicide of his best friend that May. He winds accepted by an eccentric group of seniors (including Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, and Mae Whitman), and the movie progresses through the ups and downs of friendships and the high school year, ultimately ending in a manner that I found very satisfying. The movie evokes a subtle acke even as it serves as wish fulfillment fantasy, you wish these people were your high school friends. I was surprised by this film and super impressed, I would  recommend it highly to those who might be compatible with its spirt, which isn't everyone. I'd like to read the book this was so good, and there are one or two dangling plot threads I'd like a fuller story on as well.  ***1/2

The Dissident (2020)

Documentarian Bryan Fogel caught lighting in a bottle with 'Icarus', he stumbled into a story about Russian dopping which got that government banded from the Olympics, arguably saved the life of his informant, and made his own career, truly earning his Oscar. 'The Dissident' can't replicate that happenstance, it doesn't try, but it is a well thought out, lucid handling of a matter of real world importance, the death of exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khasoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. The film takes that event, the who and why, and places it in context of the power dynamics within the Saudi government and larger resistance to their rule, as well as authoritarian rule in other middle eastern nations. Significant stuff. You also get a nice picture of Khasoggi, long a spokesman for the ruling machine who had finally had enough, and paid with his life. ***1/2

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

 2017's 'Wonder Woman' was surely the best received, most fully functional movie to come out of Warner Brother's lackluster DCEU. Retaining both that films capable star Gal Gadot, and director Patty Jenkins, and with it's 1980's setting promising some fun possibilities, all seem set for a big hit both creatively and at the box office. Covid-19 of course kept the film out of the theaters this summer, instead getting a strange bifurcated roll out on Christmas Day, a more modest theatrical release and streaming as the tent poll film for the newish HBO Max. I made a point of seeing the film on the big screen, and watched it with roughly 30 people in a 3pm showing on Monday. I'm glad I saw it theatrically because I was going to see it eventually and the film doesn't have much beyond it's visuals to recommend it. 

Now I was with the thing at first, I even enjoyed the appropriately goofy 1980's style fantasy plot, a wishing stone proves to be at the center of strange goings on. I like that the villain played by Pedro Pascal was motivated not by a desire for revenge, or to rule the world like all too many movie villains', but by simple greed and ego. I liked Kristen Wiig's awkward, shy, nerdy girl turned gorgeous knock out bit, a stock comedy arc and very 80's. I thought that it kind of worked ridiculously bringing Steve Trevor back for a role reversal on the fish out of water schtick from the first move. The action sequences at the mall and in the desert were fun as well. 

However about half way through this endearingly quirky superhero plot the whole movie goes completely off the rails. It gets ridiculous, try's to make the story too big, get's increasingly stupid and chaotic, character motivations stop making sense, it gets lazy, and preachy, and annoying. The coda at the end feels slapped on, and the mid credits teaser scene is offputtingly gimmicky and kind of desperate. So this movie is about 40% enjoyable cheese, and 60% mistake. DC proves again that it is no Marvel. One of the worst movies I've seen this year. *1/2

The Bishop's Wife (1947)

Remarkably for me I'd never seen this before. 'The Bishop's Wife' tells the story of an angel (Cary Grant) who sets out to help an episcopal-type Bishop (David Niven), however part of the way he goes about this is by seducing the man's wife (Loretta Young). I get that it's fanciful, and sets out to inspire and warm the heart, and it does that to an extent, but I couldn't quite get over the weirdness of God's messenger getting all the women in the picture hot an bothered. The inclusion of the Monty Woolley secondary story I found a pleasant surprise. I get why this movie is only a second tier Christmas classic, though don't get me wrong, it somehow mostly works. ***

Greyhound (2020)

Tom Hanks did double duty on 'Greyhound', a film he both stars in and wrote the screenplay for, adapting the 1955 novel 'The Good Shepard' by C. S. Forester, who is perhaps best known for 'The African Queen'. This movie is no 'African Queen' however, it is dull and gray, lacks for interesting characters, and is such a slow build that it hardly evoked an emotion in me until rather late in the picture. 

The story of a military troop and supply convey making the dangerous trans Atlantic crossing early in 1942, on a technical level the film is excellent. This movies feels quite real and even unusually accurate, and I get that it is going for a semi documentary approach, we see characters doing their jobs, but we don't learn much about them. The exception to that rule is Hanks's Commander Ernest Krause, who is a quite, religious man, self sacrificing, fair, the embodiment of what we take that generation who fought the War to be. He is admirable, but never very interesting as a protagonist.

I apricate that the film was setting out to tell a fairly simple story, it was not trying to be a kind of 'definitive work on the subject' or out spectacle all that came before it. So while a modest film in many ways I think it would have much more impact on a big screen. However 'Greyhound' was another victim of 2020, scheduled for theatrical release I think in the summer, instead its available on Appel TV, arguably their first big cinematic get. The movie left me a little cold and a fair bit bored, a disappointment to me, but not to most based on a 79% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. From me however it gets just **

I Am Woman (2019)

 'I Am Woman' is an Australian produced bio-pic on the late singer Helen Reddy, whose 1972 hit 'I Am Woman' become the unofficial anthem of the feminist movement, and the ultimately unsuccessful battle for passage of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. What set's this movie off from the usual arc of infidelity, drug abuse, and finical mismanagement one associates with musical bio pics, is here that arc is enacted not by Reddy, but by her manager  and second husband Jeff Wald, played finely by Evan Petters. Reddy herself is played by Tilda Cobham-Hervey, an Australian actress who is reminiscent of Rooney Mara, and ironically has been dating Rooney Mara's 'Lion' co-star Dev Patel since 2017. Cobham-Hervey brings an appropriate combination of determination and pleasant pluckiness to the part. 

Spanning the years 1966-1989 this is a fairly straight forward telling of the singers rise to prominence, and subsequent fading into the back ground. There is also a nice sub plot here about Lillian Roxon (Danielle Macdonald), Helen's good friend and fellow Australian, who authored the first encyclopedia of rock and roll before dying from an asthma attack in 1973 at the age of 41.

A pleasant film, that wisely gives us near to complete renderings of many of Reddy's best remembered songs, dubbed by Chelsea Cullen, who sounds appropriately like her. An undemanding film that is not trying to break new ground, but is an appropriate tribute for fans of the late artist to enjoy. **1/2