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Another Fine Mess

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Stan & Ollie

by Hope Madden

Wouldn’t it be nutty to peek behind the curtain of one of cinema’s most famous pairs—your Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello, Bert and Ernie—only to find that they are exactly as entertaining and likable in person as they are onscreen?

That’s actually part of what makes Stan & Ollie, Jon S. Baird’s loving biopic of the famous comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, so peculiar a film. Go in expecting demons, divas and drama and you will be disappointed. If you’re looking for a tender image of partnership and friendship struggling to overcome a harsh business, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The inexhaustible talent of John C. Reilly squeezes into a fat suit of Darkest Hour impressiveness as Oliver “Babe” Hardy. The physical transformation awes, but it’s the way the actor mines Hardy’s gentle good nature that impresses even more.

Coogan’s the real surprise. Not only is his resemblance to Stan Laurel almost eerie, but the performance is easily the best dramatic turn of his career.

Both actors, working from a wistful script by Coogan’s Philomena writing partner Jeff Pope, sidestep drama in favor of a kind of resigned camaraderie. Theirs is that well-worn relationship of both love and necessity that comes with decades of familiarity, unspoken grievances and love.

The actors’ chemistry is a fine match for that of the iconic duo, and through the pairing, Baird explores partnership in a more meaningful and less sentimental way than what you’d normally find in a “stars in their declining years” biopic.

The result is an endearing, if slightly underwhelming dramedy, enlivened by Baird’s charming direction. While the film is at its best when Coogan and Reilly quietly grapple with changes facing them, it is at its most enjoyable when art imitates life imitating art. That is, when Stan and Ollie drag a really big trunk up a big flight of stairs, only to let go of it, watch it slide back to the bottom, and do it again.

Like the comedy of Laurel and Hardy, this film is sweet, clever and entirely of another time.

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Fall Down and Geek Out

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The Great Buster

by Brandon Thomas

Physical comedy is as important to the history of cinema as the cameras themselves. Charlie Chaplin, The 3 Stooges, Jim Carrey and the cast of Jackass all kept the time-honored tradition of taking a blow for the sake of a laugh. Even everyday folk got into the act by sending their accident-filled home movies to TV’s America’s Funniest Home Videos.

For many fans, historians and critics, Buster Keaton was the best of them all.

Keaton started in the biz by performing alongside his parents in their traveling vaudevillian show. His adept ability to sell a pratfall like no one else made their act enormously popular. A fortuitous meeting with Fatty Arbuckle introduced Buster to the art of filmmaking, and by the time Keaton reached his mid-30s, he’d directed, starred in and produced multiple feature and short films.

With The Great Buster, director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon) delivers an absolute love letter to Keaton and his career. The film not only touches on Keaton’s highs in the 1920s, but also on his low points when he lost all creative and financial control of his projects. Alcoholism, infidelity, divorce and family estrangement all plagued Keaton during the downturn in his career.

Bogdanovich wisely spends most of the time discussing and reveling over Keaton’s work. Bogdanovich himself narrates the film, and his adoration of Keaton is evident in his voice as he touches on everything from Keaton’s masterworks in the 1920s to his commercial work in the 1960s. Filmmakers and actors such as Mel Brooks, James Karen, Quentin Tarantino and Johnny Knoxville also share how their affinity for Keaton helped shape their careers.

The film really takes hold when the more “film geek” elements are at play. Specific scenes and/or gags from Keaton’s work are broken down, analyzed and fawned over by Bogdanovich and fellow filmmakers. The film even backtracks to spend the last third pouring over the classics that Buster created in the 20s, leading right up to the invention of talkies.

Like recent documentaries De Palma and Milius, the love and affection for the subject and their creations is all over The Great Buster. Bogdanovich has crafted a precise and professional movie, but, more importantly, he’s infused the film with respect and admiration.

https://youtu.be/NLiRLN_EKu8

Outtakes, Slider

Nom Nom Nom 2019: Let’s Argue Again About the Oscars

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Just eight best picture nominations this year and a list of contenders that clarifies what a kickass year 2018 was for female roles. Well done, chicas!

Do we have gripes? Well, honestly, not too many. Here’s the rundown.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
This is a good list. Strong. Not a lot of bones to pick here. Our heart goes out to anyone trying to narrow this field down to a single winner. Wouldn’t have minded seeing Nicole Kidman (Boy Erased) or Thomasin McKenzie (Leave No Trace) get in, but how to make the room?

Amy Adams (Vice)
Marina de Tavira (Roma)
Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk)
Emma Stone (The Favourite)
Rachel Weisz (The Favourite)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
We love Sam Elliott. Honestly, who doesn’t? Driver and Rockwell, too, and all were amazing in their respective films. But we would have had to leave them off in favor of Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther) and Lucas Hedges (Boy Erased). But no Timothee Chalamet for Beautiful Boy? That might be the biggest snub this year.

Mahershala Ali (Green Book)
Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman)
Sam Elliott (A Star is Born)
Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)
Sam Rockwell (Vice)

LEAD ACTOR
Another solid list, although how the entire world ignored three insane performances from Joaquin Phoenix this year—You Were Never Really Here, Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot, The Sisters Brothers—is beyond us. Please, please do yourself the favor and watch You Were Never Really Here. We’d have given him Mortensen’s slot, but we and the Academy disagree about that one particular film this year.

We would also have made room for Ben Foster (Leave No Trace) with a Malek/Dafoe coin flip.

Christian Bale (Vice)
Bradley Cooper (A Star is Born)
Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate)
Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody)
Viggo Mortensen (Green Book)

LEAD ACTRESS
We would have applauded nods for Elsie Fisher in Eighth Grade and Toni Collette for Hereditary, but holy cow, people, this is acting. This is the art and the craft, right here. No bones. No complaints. Just awe.

Yalitza Aparicio (Roma)
Glenn Close (The Wife)
Olivia Coleman (The Favourite)
Lady Gaga (A Star is Born)
Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Had hoped for Black Panther and Leave No Trace (in a whiplashed swing from “everybody saw” to “nobody saw”). Buster Scruggs was a surprise, but when is it ever a bad idea to nominate the Coens?

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel and Ethan Coen)
BlacKkKlansman (Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, Spike Lee)
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty)
If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)
A Star is Born (Eric Roth, Bradley Cooper Will Fetters)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
What we would have given to see Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade get some love here. Where would we have put it? Honestly, only The Favourite and Roma are better written, but in our book, it certainly deserved the slot designated to the self-congratulatory Green Book.

The Favourite (Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara)
First Reformed (Paul Schrader)
Green Book (Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly)
Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)
Vice (Adam McKay)

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Don’t mind the overrated Shirkers not making it, but shocked not to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor? here.

Free Solo
Hale County: This Morning, This Evening
Minding the Gap
Of Fathers and Sons
RBG

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FEATURE
Um…Burning? Really, did you just forget?

Capernaum
Cold War
Never Looks Away
Roma
Shoplifters

CINEMATOGRPHY
We’re a little surprised not to see If Beale Street Could Talk or First Man included, but none of these are weak.

Cold War
The Favourite
Never look away
Roma
A Star is Born

ANIMATED
This is just a fight for second place after Spider-Verse.

Incredibles 2
Isle of dogs
Mirai
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

DIRECTOR
Would have cheered for Lynne Ramsay (YWNRH), surprised not to see Bradley Cooper (A Star is Born) and disappointed not to see Ryan Coogler (Black Panther), but how great is it to see Pawel Pawlikowski make this list for his groundbreaking love story Cold War? Pretty great. (Also, Oscar likes black and white movies.)

Lee, Lanthimos and Cuaron, though, that is a trifecta we applaud until our hands ache.

Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman)
Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War)
Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite)
Alfonso Cuaron (Roma)
Adam McKay (Vice)

FILM
Only eight this year, which means we can wish for two without having to bump any. We wish for Eighth Grade and Hereditary. Then we’d bump Bohemian Rhapsody and admitted frontrunner Green Book in favor of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and You Were Never Really Here. There you go. We’ve dreamed up a nice list.

Black Panther
BlacKkKansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star is Born
Vice

The 91st annual Academy Awards will air Feb. 24th on ABC.

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Family Invitation

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Roma

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Thank you Netflix for financing and distributing Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece, Roma. No offense to the small screens that Netflix often lives in, but this one demands to be seen on the big ones.

A breathtaking culmination of his work to date, Roma pulls in elements and themes, visuals and curiosities from every film Cuarón has made (including a wonderfully organic ode to the inspiration for one of his biggest), braiding them into a semi-autobiographical meditation on family life in the early 1970s.

At the film’s heart is an extended group concerning an affluent Mexico City couple (Fernando Grediaga and the scene-stealing Marina de Tavira), their four children and their two live-in servants Adela (Nancy Garcia Garcia) and Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio).

The family unit will morph, stretch and strengthen by film’s end as Cuarón envelopes us in a languidly paced but visually sumptuous exploration of Cleo’s point of view.

A remarkable Aparicio quietly observes all that goes on around her—the tumult and the quiet of life inside and outside the house—as Cuarón’s camera performs a cross between poetry and ballet to capture those observations.

Filmed in gorgeous black and white, the picture is showy without being showy, it’s realistic with flourishes of absurdism. More than anything, it is proof of Cuarón’s mastery as a cinematic storyteller. The same fluidity he brought to his Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban serves a different kind of magic here, capturing the intimate and the epic, the simple and the wildly complicated with pristine clarity.

Sequence upon sequence offers a dizzying array of beauty, as foreground and background often move in glorious concert during meticulously staged extended takes that somehow feel at once experimental and restrained. The effect is of a nearly underwater variety, a profound serenity that renders any puncture, from a street parade moving blindly past the distraught woman in its path to a murder in broad daylight, that much more compelling.

Roma is filmmaking of the most consummate skill. Though it’s anchored in family strife that might feel at home in a Lifetime melodrama, the film achieves an intimacy that’s grand, detailed and perhaps more than anything else, inviting. Accept that invitation, and Cuaron will serve you a feast not easy to leave behind, even if you want to.

You won’t want to.

Outtakes

Bingeable: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

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The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Seasons: 1
Status: Season 2 coming 2019
Watch it on: Netflix

This ain’t the laugh track Sabrina you remember. This is bolder. Sexier. This is Sabrina with 666% more Satan. This is Sabrina taking place one town over from Riverdale.

The best part about Sabrina is that it takes place outside of time, much like Riverdale. Both series feature teenagers running amok with seemingly adult lives, unlimited time and money, and extremely limited supervision. Both series are also based on their respective comics. And, both series feature clothing and lifestyles that seem liberated by 2018 sensibilities in a weirdly 1950s setting.

While Riverdale flung Archie characters into a bizarre CW murder-mystery fan fiction, there was already much darker source material for The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina in a comic by the same name.

Sabrina has a refreshing arc that boils down to: How do I continue my life as a progressive young feminist AND harvest the undeniable power of Satan? Featuring more than one character of color and a gender fluid bff, CAOS shoots for progressive and lands somewhere near We’re Getting There.

You’ll have to forgive some (read: most) of its plot points (How does mining BY HAND sustain this city in the year of our dark lord…2018? 1950? What year is it?). You’ll also have to redefine what you mean by “good guys.” (Did she just say she misses eating long pig?) But you’ll be rewarded with some truly What The Fuck moments and the reincarnation of Salem the Cat’s sass into a sexy pansexual cousin on house arrest.

Featuring: The Statue that the Satanic Church is suing over

Watch it because: Riverdale doesn’t have enough actual Satanic worship for your taste.

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Screening Room: Glass, Shoplifters, Pledge

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Can Shyamalan do his trilogy right? Is Shoplifters the best foreign language film of the year? Are fraternities ever a good idea? We cover Glass, Shoplifters and Pledge, plus all that’s worth note in new home entertainment, on this week’s podcast.

Listen HERE.

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Eat the Soup!

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Pledge

by Hope Madden

How does one create a Patrick Bateman?

On its surface, Pledge may appear to be little more than a competently made fraternity horror in the tradition of Skulls. It is a cautionary tale about hazing taken to its sadistic (if likely logical) extreme.

But director Daniel Robbins’s latest horror show, from a tight script by co-star Zack Weiner, digs into issues bigger than tribe mentality. Pledge is not just about how far you’d go to belong. It asks about compliance, cowardice, and the cost and definition of success.

Weiner plays Alex. Alex is a college freshman and a nerd. He’s joined by buddies Ethan (Phillip Andre Botello) and Justin (Zachery Byrd), the three forming a trio of losers looking for acceptance. As the day of fraternity pledge party embarrassments wears on, a pretty girl shows up from nowhere and invites the buddies to a different kind of party.

Who can say too “good to be true”? Well, anybody who’s ever seen a movie, but Pledge has some surprises hiding behind those kegs.

The film’s first obvious strength is the cast. Each of the primary trio of actors delivers a believable outcast, and their chemistry feels fresh and honest enough that you never doubt their actions.

In fact, all the performances are quite solid—the good guys occasionally unlikeable, the bad guys sometimes teetering on sympathetic—and the writing is sharp.

Once Robbins has you rooting for his sad sack heroes, the film works well enough as a straightforward exercise in bloodlust and torture. And nasty ass soup.

But where Weiner’s savvy script and Robbins’s sly direction really excel is in digging into this predictable plot (see Hostel, American Werewolf in Paris and any number of other “hot chick invites doofus guys to a party at their own peril” subgenre) to find an ugly picture of American privilege.

Pledge is no masterpiece. It is, however, a tightly packaged, insightful and mean little flick.

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Standup Comic

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Glass

by George Wolf

M. Night Shyamalan has been grappling with expectations for nearly twenty years. They were high when he was blowing our minds with twist endings, but the craving for another Sixth Sense experience led its follow up, Unbreakable, to be wrongly labeled as a step down.

After years of diminished returns led to zero expectations for a Shyamalan project, Unbreakable began to get its due in retrospect, a hand the writer/director played perfectly with the riveting Split three years ago. That film stood tall on its own, but when the drop-the-mic final scene revealed it as an Unbreakable sequel all along, expectations for the next round went skyward pretty damn fast.

Or was that just me?

I know it wasn’t, and while Glass caps the trilogy with a dive into comic book lore that is completely fascinating to watch unfold, it lands with a strangely unsatisfying thud.

Split left us with The Beast – the most dangerous of Kevin Crumb’s (James McAvoy) “horde” of personalities – on the loose in Philly. Glass begins with David Dunn (Bruce Willis), who has spent the years since Unbreakable running a security firm with this son (Spencer Treat Clark in a nice return) and walking the streets as a mysterious vigilante hero dubbed “The Overseer”, tracking him down.

Their standoff leads to an early burst of crowd-pleasing action, and a trip to the psych ward for both Crumb and Dunn – the very same hospital where Elijah “Mr. Glass” Price (Samuel L. Jackson) has been serving his life sentence.

Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) arrives to define the film’s central conflict, telling them all that superpowers are only for comic books, and everything remarkable about their lives can be deconstructed and explained, much like a magic trick.

Shyamalan’s feel for pace and sequencing is fine here, as is his changing color saturation when superhero themes gain strength. The film’s first two acts build a compelling arc on the fragility of human potential set against the ambitious premise of comic books as real life.

As Crumb and his 23 identities, McAvoy is completely mesmerizing once again, able to move freely between contrasting personalities with such incredible precision the understated performances around him seem only right.

Willis’s default setting of steely glares serves him well as the reluctant savior, Jackson gives his scheming mastermind the right mix of brilliance and condescension, and Paulson wraps Dr. Staple in a fitting air of mystery from her first introduction.

It is only Anya Taylor-Joy, returning as Casey “the girl The Beast let go,” whose talent seems ill-placed. While Casey is seemingly there as a reminder of Crumb’s humanity, the frequent tight closeups on Taylor-Joy’s comic book ready eyes become a heavy handed blur to the message.

But with Split putting Shyamalan firmly back in his groove, expectations for an unforgettable end to the trilogy create a uniquely painted corner. Potent storytelling gives way to declarations that ring of self-serving defenses of the filmmaker’s own work, while more obvious foreshadowing overtakes the nifty, hide-in-plain-sight subtlety.

Would Glass have worked better if we hadn’t been standing around staring all this time? Probably. but Shyamalan got us here with skill, and he gets us out with a film that’s easy to respect, but hard to cheer for.

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Family Matters

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Mirai

by Brandon Thomas

Confession: I’ve never seen an entire Japanese animated film.

Spirited Away? Nope.

Howl’s Moving Castle? Sorry.

Akira? Not even a single frame.

I don’t have any kind of unreasonable hatred for this type of film, but I’ve never had much interest either. Thankfully, Mirai was a nice introduction for this anime novice.

Kun is a typical toddler. He enjoys playing with his toys, looking at books, and being the center of attention to his mom and dad. That changes when his baby sister, Mirai, is brought home. Confused by the changes happening around him, Kun retreats to a world where he is able to meet family members at different periods of their lives.

What struck me first about Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai is how the film doesn’t shy away from letting Kun behave like a real kid. He’s selfish, loud and cannot control his emotions. He’s not the easiest protagonist to like at first. The delightful part is seeing Kun grow, and learn to put these bad behaviors to bed.

Mirai is interested in looking at how difficult it is to be a family. It’s tough for parents to bring home another baby when they already have one at home. Cleaning still needs to be done, dinner still needs cooking, life still happens… and that can cause friction. Likewise, it’s hard to be a kid in this kind of dynamic. One minute, you’re the center of mom and dad’s universe, and the next – you’re not.

Kun’s travels through time via the garden never feel like cutesy spectacle, as each of his meetings is rooted in character. Kun learns about empathy, and that his own parents struggled with things when they were younger. By becoming more in touch with previous generations, Kun is able to fully realize his place in his own family.

Emotional yes, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had with Mirai. Kun finds himself turned into a half-boy half-dog at one point, and takes an exciting motorcycle ride with his great-grandfather at another. There’s a joyfulness to Kun’s interactions with this fantastical world that’s perfectly childlike.

Mirai might lack the belly laughs that accompany a Pixar movie, but the message is just as potent. Once the credits start to roll, that message is what sticks with us.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?