Tag Archives: Brandon Thomas

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Murky and Absent Danger

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An Acceptable Loss

by Brandon Thomas

Morality tale.

That phrase kept popping up in my mind while watching An Acceptable Loss. Unfortunately, the subject of morals mixed with politics was something the film was only concerned with on a surface level.

Libby Lamm (Tika Sumpter) has just started a teaching position at a prestigious Chicago area university. Although she’s excited about this fresh start after leaving a position at the White House, many staff and students are less than enthused with her presence on campus. One of Libby’s pupils (Ben Tavassoli), in particular, is fixated on the new professor and begins tracking her every move around campus and her home. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn about the devastating decision that led Libby out of politics, and into being one of the country’s most hated pariahs.

The most frustrating aspect of An Acceptable Loss is how it sets up a central conflict that could have made for a spellbinding thriller. It instead settles for a Cinemax-level B-movie.

One of the earlier scenes between Libby and her student, Martin, is a tense clash between two people who couldn’t be further apart, and it makes you wish for the movie that might’ve been. Instead, character motivations change on a dime, and that early sense of dread is replaced with a sense of “been there, done that.”

The majority of the cast doesn’t make the material any easier to swallow. Sumpter’s wooden delivery of political jargon is more reminiscent of a freshman PoliSci major than a beltway professional. Tavassol spends the first half of the film brooding at every other character (I honestly expected him to start giving extras the Stink Eye), and the second half doing his best (worst?) Shia Labeouf on cough medicine impression.

Jamie Lee Curtis, in her small role as vice president and president, fares somewhat better. Her natural gravitas lends itself well to being the leader of the free world; unfortunately, the dialogue she’s delivering is almost 100 percent clunky exposition.

It’s unclear what director Joe Chappelle’s (Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers) original intentions were. Did he envision a taught political thriller in the vain of Three Days of the Condor or was a low-rent Pelican Brief always the plan?

Chappelle’s mishandling of the film’s focus and pacing hobbles the An Acceptable Loss early on and it’s never able to recover.

Maybe this movie was never going to be anything other than cheap Tom Clancy. The promise of that first act, however, hangs over the rest of the film, and in the back of this viewer’s brain, like a giant “What If?”

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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

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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.

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JLo Goes Low

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Second Act

by Brandon Thomas

1998 was a good year to be a fan of Jennifer Lopez. She had just come off of a great turn as Selena Quintanilla in Selena, and her performance as Karen Sisco in Out of Sight made even more people stand up and take notice. Unfortunately, in the following years, movies like The Wedding Planner, Maid in Manhattan and Gigli showed that the promise of 1998 was an outlier. Second Act continues that storied tradition of mediocrity.

On the surface, life looks pretty good for Maya (Lopez). She has a job she excels at and enjoys; has a great partner (Milo Ventimiglia); and is surrounded by supportive family and friends. After she’s passed over for a promotion due to her lack of a college education, Maya’s confidence in her life choices start to crumble. When her genius nephew spruces up her resume with a few white lies, Maya lands an opportunity that allows her to use her natural skills, but also forces her to pretend to be someone she’s not.

Second Act is a confusing mix of several different kinds of comedies. There’s the romance straight out of the romantic comedy, pratfalls and potty humor from the Apatow camp, and a gee-whiz camaraderie angle that left me wondering if magic pants were about to come into play.

None of these approaches works.

Lopez is completely out of her element with the physical comedy. She sells tripping over a barrier about as convincingly as Denise Richards did playing a nuclear physicist in The World Is Not Enough. Not helping is her complete lack of comedic chemistry with co-stars Leah Remini, Treat Williams and Dave Foley. When the top comedic performance of the movie is delivered by Charlyne Yi… there’s a problem.

The film’s entire structure is supported by the worst kind of cliches: Maya’s lie and the hoops she has to jump through to keep the lie alive; the workplace competition that was tired in 2013 when The Internship did it; and a lazy second act reveal so bad it’d feel out of place in a Hallmark Christmas movie. Second Act is a Frankenstein’s monster of plot points from already terrible movies.

This is a movie that your mom who sees one movie a year will probably love. For the rest of us, it’s the worst movie of 2002 that somehow got released in 2018.

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Burning Questions

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Burning

by Brandon Thomas

Films like M, Vertigo and Chinatown have spent decades taking audiences on twisty narrative rides. These classic mysteries raise thrilling questions, and payoff with satisfying answers. But what if a great mystery wasn’t at all concerned with answering the questions it raised? Chang-dong Lee’s Burning is more interested in the journey than it is the destination.

Jong-Su (Ah-In Yoo) spends his days doing odd jobs and taking care of his family’s dilapidated farm on the outskirts of town. A chance encounter brings Hae-mi (Jong-seo Jeon), a childhood neighbor, back into his life. Through Hae-mi, Jong-Su also meets Ben (Steven Yeun of The Walking Dead), a wealthy, good-looking and mysterious young man. While having drinks one evening, Ben confides to Jong-Su that he occasionally enjoys burning abandoned greenhouses. Jong-Su begins to think that burning greenhouses isn’t Ben’s only secret.

Burning unravels slowly. Two and a half hours seems daunting at first glance, but the twinge of unease hanging over the film keeps you involved the entire time. There’s a sense of dread that is hard to pinpoint, but is also intoxicating.

The film comes alive through the character work. Jong-Su is an open book. He’s miserable, lonely, disappointed and bored. And we get to see it all. He tells Hae-mi and Ben that he’s a writer, but he’s never actually shown writing. He spends hours working his monotonous jobs and pretending to be invested in taking care of the family farm. Jong-Su is a phony, and Ben sees that immediately.

Hae-mi and Ben, on the other hand, are complete enigmas to Jong-Su and the audience. Hae-mi tells Jong-Su stories from their childhood that he doesn’t remember, and eventually finds out aren’t true. Ben’s wealth, job and true motivation are complete mysteries. Knowing next to nothing about these two people that he so admires frustrates Jong-Su to the point of obsession.

For nearly 20 years, South Korean cinema has cemented itself as the industry to beat, creatively. Burning is absolutely no exception. The film owes more to Memories of Murder than it does Oldboy, slowly oozing into your psyche with its methodical and unconventional approach.

It’s easy to be frustrated by Burning as the credits start to role. It offers zero easy answers, and even refuses to acknowledge Jong-Su as an unreliable narrator. By defying genre conventions and expectations, Burning provides an alternative mystery that pops with just as much excitement.

Burning burns ever so bright.

For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of October 30

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Look at all these movies! What do you want, cartoons? Drama? Indie rom com? Horror? Unhinged Nic Cage? You know you want unhinged Nic Cage, and lucky for you, he’s here! We’ll shed some insight on what else is worth a look.

Click the film title to read the full review.

Mandy (DVD)

Searching

The Dark

The Spy Who Dumped Me

Juliet, Naked

The Darkest Minds

Slender Man

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies

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The Good, the Bad, and the Hungry

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Black ’47

by Brandon Thomas

The Irish haven’t always fared so well in the world of cinema. Sean Connery’s singing in Darby O’Gill and the Little People isn’t quite remembered as one of the top musical performances. Thankfully, in the years since Darby O’Gill, the Irish have fared a lot better with films like My Left Foot, Angela’s Ashes and Once.

Black ’47 opens at the height of the Great Famine in Ireland – a time when countless Irish left their homeland for America, and when over a million that stayed died of starvation. At this time, Ireland is also under the punishing rule of the British Empire. While the Irish people starve, the British lords presiding over Ireland complain that the people want “too much.”

Martin Feeney (James Frecheville) has returned to Ireland after having deserted the British Army while fighting in Afghanistan. Feeney learns that his mother has succumbed to the famine, and his brother has been hanged for murder. Desperate to get his remaining family out of Ireland, he pleads with them to join him in going to America. Unfortunately, tragedy strikes, and Feeney finds himself hunted by former comrade Hannah (Hugo Weaving), and two young British soldiers (Freddie Fox and Barry Keoghan).

What’s immediately interesting about Black ’47 is that it’s essentially a Western. These characters might not be fighting the Comanche, or ordering up a bottle of whiskey in a saloon, but the Western tropes are there: the recently returned solider seeking revenge; the posse turned lose to hunt down a raging outlaw; evil land barons uninterested in the lives they destroy. Director Lance Daly has fun tipping his hat at the great American genre, while never going full John Ford.

Any good Western homage has to be anchored by lead performances with presence. Frecheville brings a soulless quality to Martin. He is a man that barely had anything to begin with, and when the rest is taken from him he becomes cold and methodical. Grieving isn’t an option, and the emptiness in Frecheville’s eyes in the latter half of the film is chilling.

Weaving’s world-weary Hannah slowly becomes the moral compass of the film. He’s numb to so much of the horror around him – having participated in it, too – but Feeney’s rampage opens up something in the veteran soldier that he can’t quiet. Weaving has a gravitas that cannot be ignored.

Black ’47 has something to say about the horrors of Ireland’s past. The film just wants to say it through the guise of shootouts and rollicking revenge.

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Guiding Light

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Pick of the Litter

by Brandon Thomas

Whether it’s true or not, dogs make us feel like their sole purpose in life is to fill us full of happiness. Dancing at the front door when you come home from work… a sneak attack of kisses that always ends with you in a fit of giggles…nice long naps together on the couch. More than just making us feel good, dogs can serve a greater purpose in the lives of people with visual impairments. That journey to find this purpose is where Pick of the Litter takes us.

The documentary opens with the birth of Labrador pups Patriot, Potomac, Phil, Primrose and Poppet. They are the newest arrivals on the campus of Guide Dogs for the Blind, and their training will start on only their second day of life. The training to become a guide dog isn’t easy; out of the 800 dogs born there each year, only 300 become actual guides. The process is time-consuming, strict and unemotional… but it’s never, ever boring.

Directors Don Hardy, Jr. and Dana Nachman give us plenty of cute puppy footage, but never shy away from the seriousness of what a guide dog will end up doing. Bonds immediately form between the puppies and their “raisers,” who will work to socialize them. They can be quickly pulled away from those same raisers if it’s felt that the dogs can benefit more from being in another home. It’s that pull between emotion and dedication that gives Pick of the Litter its ultimate strength.

The urge to root for these pups is there from the beginning. Pick of the Litter doesn’t get too clinical in its approach to the dogs. We’re allowed to get to know them and pick out those distinct personalities. It also stings when one of them isn’t able to make the cut.

The stories of the people involved are just as important. The frustration felt by the trainers when the dogs don’t pass is palpable. Of course, the end game is for these dogs to end up with someone who will rely on them as their guides. Those stories are thankfully not lost, and give the audience that light at the end of the tunnel for our pup stars.

It’s easy to forget that dogs can do more than fetch, roll over and shake. They can give some people their independence back.

Man’s best friend, indeed.

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An Unfortunate Movie Mixtape

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Juliet, Naked

by Brandon Thomas

Movies that mix music and quirk tend to punch me right in the feels (is a 36-year-old allowed to say “feels”?). Once, Begin Again and Sing Street are a few examples of movies that gave my tear ducts a workout. The only feelings Juliet, Naked conjured in me were boredom, apathy and a dash of frustration.

Annie (Rose Bryne) is stuck in a rut. She lives in her sleepy hometown and works the same job her father did. Her boyfriend, Duncan (Chris O’Dowd), is more interested in a long-disappeared musician than starting a family with her. When a CD demo for Duncan’s favorite musician, Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke), shows up at their home, Annie is the first to listen. Her negative reaction to the album, mixed with Duncan’s over-the-top positive one, sets off a chain of events that ends with Crowe himself visiting her in England.

I realized halfway through Juliet, Naked that director Jesse Peretz (Our Idiot Brother) was trying to reinvent the classic rom-com. Instead, it’s more of a Frankenstein’s monster hybrid, as one part indie drama mixed with your classic rom-com clichés makes for strange bedfellows. It’s not to say that these tropes couldn’t exist together – they could – but it would need to be in the hands of a stronger filmmaker.

The cast fares a little bit better. Hawke and Byrne do what they can with a messy script, and they have an undeniable chemistry. The problem – again – lies in that it sometimes feels like the characters are moving between two different films. One moment, Hawke’s character is lamenting his shortcomings as a father, and the next he’s in a hospital bed surrounded by all of his ex-wives/lovers. It’s a scene that wouldn’t feel out of place in a network sitcom.

Byrne is the one saving grace. She’s always been able to lift the material she’s given and it’s no different here. There’s a sweetness to Annie that never feels naïve. She’s a competent, driven woman who just hasn’t allowed herself to go after what she wants in life.

There’s a behind-the-camera pedigree to Juliet, Naked that makes its shortcomings all the more disappointing. It’s based on the book by Nick Hornby (About a Boy, High Fidelity), and produced by Judd Apatow (Bridesmaids, Superbad, Pineapple Express). Apatow has especially shown himself to be adept at producing really funny, thoughtful comedies.

Had Juliet, Naked kept both feet firmly in one genre, I think the film would’ve had something nice to say. Instead, it’s a murky mess of what could have been.

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Hollywood in the Closet

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Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood

by Brandon Thomas

Hollywood has always been about vanity, secrets and fiction. It’s an industry filled with people who make a living pretending to be someone else. Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood tells a tale of men and women who led fictional personal lives too.

After his service in World War II, Midwest transplant Scotty Bowers lands a job at a busy gas station on Hollywood Blvd. It’s here where Scotty meets his first secretly gay Hollywood celebrity: Walter Pidgeon (Forbidden Planet). This meeting—and subsequent sexual encounter—opens Bowers’s eyes to a large community of closeted gay actors and actresses. He wants to give them a place to meet one another…and to make a buck in the process. Through his likability and ability to find sexy, young men and women, Bowers cements his place among the Hollywood elite.

During his tenure as “Pimp to the Stars,” Bowers finds himself setting up rendezvous for more than just famous actors and directors, as business tycoons also knew of his reputation. Bowers also attracts the attention of British royalty. Through it all, Scotty Bowers claims to only want one thing: to make people happy.

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood could’ve easily turned into one big tell-all (and there are some revelations that I didn’t know), but director Matt Tyrnauer wisely keeps the focus squarely on Bowers himself. Scotty Bowers isn’t the flamboyant center of attention you’d expect. Instead, we’re shown a 95-year-old hoarder who spends most of his free time cruising the streets looking for junk he can load into one of his many homes.

The film wisely doesn’t rely on talking heads to fill in the gaps of the story. There’s the occasional interview with a Hollywood player like Peter Bart (former editor of Variety) or one of Scotty’s “boys,” but the bulk of the movie is composed of Scotty’s interactions with these people. Tyrnauer strives to show how Bowers continues to make connections with people, even though gay culture in Hollywood has become mainstream.

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood is a celebration of sexual freedom. The feel-good nature of the film is a byproduct of who Bowers is as a person. He claims he only wanted to make people happy—and he meant it.