The most fun of the year’s superhero movies is finally available to binge at home. Woot! There’s also a quirky indy dramedy and a naughty girls weekend available, but the smart money’s with Spidey.
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Landline
Girls Trip
Tag Archives: entertainment
We Are Marshall
Marshall
by Hope Madden
Thurgood Marshall is among the most fascinating figures in contemporary American history. Too bad his biopic isn’t about him.
Marshall, director Reginald Hudlin’s glimpse at the first black Supreme Court justice’s earlier career as a tireless NAACP lawyer, offers an image of the man by way of one of his court cases.
It’s an interesting case, though probably not the best Marshall case to choose as a focus. It does, however, allow the unearthing of many complex and unfortunately still relevant issues of racism and injustice.
Like a hardboiled detective story turned historical courtroom drama, the film follows the 1941 case of Connecticut Versus Joseph Spell in which a white New England socialite (Kate Hudson) accused her African American chauffeur (Sterling K. Brown) of rape and attempted murder.
In the role of Thurgood Marshall is go-to biopic actor Chadwick Boseman. As you might expect given his string of impressive performances, Boseman has brooding, wise-beyond-his-years charisma to spare.
Josh Gad plays Marshall’s unlikely partner-in-justice Sam Friedman, a Connecticut tax attorney who wants nothing to do with this case. He and Boseman share a sometimes comical odd couple chemistry that often works in the film’s favor but just as often does not.
This speaks to one of Marshall’s two major weaknesses: Hudlin can’t find a tone. Too stylized to be a straight biopic, comical enough to feel tone deaf once the seriousness of the subject matter settles in, Marshall rarely finds its footing.
More problematic, though, is the court case itself.
Don’t get me wrong, this case is rife with cinematic elements and historical significance. The problem is that father and son writers Jacob and Michael Koskoff chose a case in which Thurgood Marshall was voiceless.
The presiding judge, capably played by the always welcome James Cromwell, forbade the out-of-state attorney to speak in court. An amazing piece of racially motivated injustice right there, making it another fascinating detail. It also means that we don’t get to see Thurgood Marshall command this court case.
It’s Gad’s Friedman who handles the courtroom drama—which he does quite well—but it leaves us with only some outside the courtroom mentoring and challenges from Marshall, and not enough else.
It may not totally sink a film built on solid performances and engaging material, but it’s enough to keep Marshall from making the kind of lasting impression it should have.
And Many More…
Happy Death Day
by Hope Madden
It’s funny how long it took people to rip off the Groundhog Day conceit—20 years, basically. No one really revisited the “day on repeat” idea (Source Code came close, but it wasn’t a full day) until Tom Cruise’s surprisingly high-quality 2014 flick Edge of Tomorrow.
It took twenty years to redo it once, and yet I’ve seen at least 9 of these this year. OK, I’ve seen two (Happy Death Day, Before I Fall) and am aware of two others (Naked, Premature). Still, that’s a lot. It’s like sitting through the same events over and over and over and over again with no idea why it’s happening or how to make it stop.
Happy Death Day does what it can to make up for its lacking originality with a tight pace and compelling lead performance.
Tree (Jessica Rothe) wakes up on her birthday in some rando’s dorm room with no memory of the night before, a raging hangover and an attitude. She’s murdered that night by a knife-wielding marauder in a plastic baby mask, only to wake up back in that same dorm room under that same They Live poster.
Repeat ad nauseam.
It doesn’t take too many déjà vu mornings before Tree decides there is a mystery to solve here and just like that, we’re off in Phil Connors territory: reliving the same day again and again gives you the chance to become a better person, right?
If, like Tree, you are unaware of Groundhog Day, Phil Connors is the Bill Murray character doomed to relive February 2 until he…well, if you haven’t seen it I don’t want to ruin it for you. But the fact that Happy Death Day addresses the groundhog in the room is part of its self-aware, played-for-comedy charm.
Rothe boasts strong comic timing and a gift for physical comedy, a skill that transitions nicely to the demands of being repeatedly victimized by a slasher.
Director Christopher Landon (Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) wisely mines Scott Lobdell’s screenplay for laughs. Given the repetitive, bloodless nature of the kills, trying to generate scares would have been a tough go.
The mystery absolutely does not hold up, red herrings are silly and fairly pointless, and whatever charm the filmmakers infuse into this recycled premise wears off just a tad before the credits roll. Still, there are funny bits and clever moments peppered throughout what is easily this year’s best Groundhog Day ripoff.
I Don’t Want to Go Out – Week of October 9
More of the best films of the summer roll onto the home screen. More of the crappy ones, too, so choose wisely. Let us help you out – click the title for a link to the full reviews.
The Beguiled
Baby Driver
Maudie
The House
Wish Upon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwZznQaxmB4
The Screening Room: Back to the Future
Click HERE to join The Screening Room Podcast, where we hash out our thoughts on Blade Runner 2049, The Mountain Between Us, and what’s new in home entertainment – The Survivalist, A Ghost Story, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and Goon 2.
Skin Trade
Blade Runner 2049
by Hope Madden
Who’s ready to go back to the future?
No gigawatts necessary. With Blade Runner 2049, director Denis Villeneuve returns us to the hulking, rain-streaked metropolis of another generation’s LA. We ride with K (Ryan Gosling), a blade runner charged, as always, with tracking down rogue replicants and retiring them.
Things get more complicated this time around.
Gosling’s the perfect choice to play dutiful sad sack LAPD blade runner K. Few actors can be simultaneously expressionless and expressive, but Gosling’s blank slate face and long distance stare seem to say something mournful, defeated and rebellious without giving anything away.
It’s no spoiler to mention that Harrison Ford returns. He’s a welcome presence, and not simply for nostalgia. The film toys with the “is he or isn’t he?” debate that has raged for 35 years, and gives the veteran ample opportunity to contribute.
God complexes, sentience and existence, clones – Ridley Scott saw his own longtime preoccupations playing out in Philip K. Dick’s prose and now, with returning screenwriter Hampton Fancher and new teammate Michael Green (Logan), Villeneuve gets his chance.
Their take is engrossing, satisfying and impressive, though the group stumbles over a few of their ideas—particularly those that consider the female in this particular universe.
As enamored of the original as we are, Villeneuve weaves intoxicating threads and callbacks throughout—most welcome is Hans Zimmer’s periodic moaning and sighing echoes of Vangelis’s original score.
In fact, the echoes from the Ridley Scott (now executive producing) ‘82 classic almost threaten to overrun the film. There are plenty of differences, though.
Villeneuve carves out a much larger corner of author Phillip K. Dick’s universe—not quite taking us off-world, but far beyond the teeming streets, towering buildings and oppressive rain of Scott’s retro-futuristic noir. The expansive story fills the screen with breathtaking frames and immediately iconic imagery, thanks in large part to acclaimed cinematographer Roger Deakins, at the top of his game.
Few if any have delivered the kind of crumbling, dilapidating futurescape Ridley Scott gave us with his original. But between the stunning visual experience and meticulous sound design, Blade Runner 2049 offers an immersive experience perfectly suited to its fantasy.
Picking at ideas of love among the soulless, of souls among the manmade, of unicorns versus sheep, Villeneuve channels Dick by way of Scott as well as a bit of James Cameron and more than a little Spike Jonze. There’s even a splash of Dickens in there.
Sounds like a hot mess, but damn if it doesn’t work.
The Screening Room: Battles Old and New
Click HERE to join us in The Screening Room where we talk through Battle of the Sexes, American Made, Super Dark Times, Woodshock and all that’s new in home entertainment.
Separation Anxiety
Super Dark Times
by Hope Madden
Super Dark Times opens ominously enough: a broken schoolroom window, a trail of blood running through empty classrooms and into a cafeteria. Though the outcome is not what you may expect, it sets an eerie stage for the 90s-set coming of age thriller.
Zach (Owen Campbell) and Josh (Charlie Tahan) are best friends, not yet driving, not yet dating, not yet determined if they are permanently dorks or just “awkward stage” dorks. They both like Allison (Elizabeth Cappuccino), both tolerate Daryl (Max Talisman).
Thanks in large part to a weirdly believable cast, writing that dances past clichés and confident direction, Super Dark Times creates the kind of charming but clumsy authenticity rarely seen in a coming-of-age indie.
Eighties high school flicks, mainly of the John Hughes variety, focused on right- versus wrong-side-of-the-tracks, popularity and the pressures parents can put on us. That is to say, they focused in most ways on the same worries that had plagued adolescent-focused films since the Fifties.
Contemporary films dealing with high schoolers require the ubiquitous presence of social media. But there is a particular darkness that entered the global consciousness about adolescents in the 90s, and Super Dark Times tries to tap that, using it to color the tone of its nostalgia and cusp-of-adulthood energy.
Kevin Phillips, making his feature debut, leans on his experience as a cinematographer to ensure the film looks as appealing and authentically nostalgic-90s-coming-of-age as possible. Writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski are unafraid to drop contextual clues without burdening characters with too much backstory, just to go on to upend expectations now and again to keep you on your toes.
Super Dark Times develops a thriller atmosphere fueled by the paranoid, confused logic of an adolescent. It’s all a fascinating and realistic journey—until it isn’t.
At a certain point in Super Dark Times, the film settles. It becomes something it didn’t have to become—like the teen who’s cool to hang onto that Subway job when he really needs to ditch town and make something of himself.
It’s an enormous credit to Philips and his young cast that this unnecessary cop-out doesn’t ruin the film. Together they have drawn so much investment in these characters and their futures that you can’t help but stay tuned and attentive.
But they could have done more.
Dream Baby Dream
Woodshock
by Hope Madden
Do you know the Suicide song Dream Baby Dream?
For some, it’s a profound and moving meditation. For others, it is the longest, most unendurably boring song on earth. It figures prominently in one scene in the film Woodshock, becoming maybe the strongest (perhaps unintentionally as well as intentionally) metaphor in the picture.
The film, written and directed by Kate and Laura Mulleavy—better known as fashion icons Rodarte than as filmmakers—follows one woman as she descends from melancholy to full-blown madness.
Theresa (Kirsten Dunst, doing much with very little) works part-time at a legal pot dispenser somewhere in California’s logging country. Marijuana is legal; assisted suicide is not, but many of the shop’s clients are suffering greatly—including Theresa’s terminally ill mother.
The film opens on Theresa dripping some kind of liquid into the contents of a joint, then holding her mother as she passes painlessly from this life.
Painless hardly describes the future Theresa has found.
Hers is a slow—very slow—downward spiral. Woodshock is a character study. Unfortunately, Theresa’s conflict and chaos happen internally, so we spend an enormous amount of time watching her do basically nothing. At the one hour 29 minute mark, she does something. That’s a long wait.
The Mulleavys attempt to offer glimpses into Theresa’s psyche with dreamlike imagery. Their lawless style is equal parts mesmerizing and frustrating. For the power they infuse in their visual presentation they deserve praise. They need to stop ignoring story, though.
Terrence Malick films can sometimes become a confoundingly beautiful amalgam of free-form imagery, episodes disguised as story providing the whisper of a plot. The reason Woodshock doesn’t hold together as well is that the few plot points provided are each of profound importance to character development. Rather than a meditation, the film becomes a highlights reel padded with hallucinatory imagery.
The sisters’ work is formally confident, and rightfully so, but their investment in story is too weak to hold attention. Woodshock offers style to spare, but it’s too shy with substance.
Needs More Politics and Candy Crush
Friend Request
by Rachel Willis
With a film like Friend Request, the task becomes creating fear out of something benign. In this case, how can a friend request on Facebook be scary? Director Simon Verhoeven tries to answer that question.
College student Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey) has a perfect life. Instead of opening credits, the film begins with a montage of scenes from Laura’s Facebook page: pictures with friends, comments from her adoring 800+ Facebook friends, even hints of a love triangle. While there could be an element of not everything is as it seems on social media, the movie doesn’t tackle this. What we see is what we get.
Into this mix comes Marina (Liesl Ahlers), a shy, lonely woman in Laura’s 200-level psychology class. Because Laura is a nice person, when Marina sends her a friend request on Facebook, she accepts. Not only does she accept the request, she takes the time to try to get to know Marina. But because this is a horror movie, in less than two weeks, Laura regrets her decision.
There are a number of ways Friend Request could go, (Marina is perfect Single White Female material) but it takes a supernatural turn. After a falling out between Laura and Marina, Laura and all of her closest friends start having nightmares. Most of the dreams are comprised of jump scares. It works the first few times, but after the third or fourth one, they stop being effective.
At times the film is unintentionally funny. It’s hard to maintain a level of horror around Facebook. If the film had embraced the silliness of its premise, the audience could have been treated to a horror comedy that warns against the danger of too much screen time, but sadly, the film tries to maintain the scares beyond what is reasonable. The suspension of disbelief is often non-existent, as a slowly loading screen generally inspires more irrational rage than outright terror.
Friend Request does follow some interesting ideas, and the actors are mostly up to the task of carrying the film’s weaker elements, but too often there’s a sense that no one’s quite sure how to make Facebook scary. Perhaps if they’d shown the real ways Facebook sucks the life out of its users, they could have had a truly horrifying tale.
