Some good stuff to watch at home this week. There’s one racing biopic that’s so much better than it has any right to be, and also two super weird flicks.
Ford v Ferrari
Greener Grass (DVD)
In Fabric (DVD)
I Don’t Want to Go Out – February 11
Tag Archives: George Wolf
Of a Feather
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
by Hope Madden and George Wolf
First on the Harley Quinn playlist: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
Harley (Margot Robbie, positively electric) tells us she and the Joker are done, and she didn’t take it well. What’s worse, Harley’s new relationship status means anyone in Gotham who’d like her dead (and there’s plenty) doesn’t have to worry about payback from “Mr. J.”
Shuffle: It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s Man’s World
At the top, there’s Roman Sionis aka Black Mask (Ewan McGregor, hamming it up to glorious effect) who likes the faces peeled off of his enemies. He wants a priceless diamond that’s been lifted by teenage pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), and Harley, forced to bargain for her life, promises to get it.
But Gotham has no shortage of talented women fed up with being kept down, and Harley tends to attract them. The vocally gifted Black Canary (June Smollett-Bell), the deadly mysterious Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, scene-stealingly deadpan) and the conveniently suspended Detective Montoya (Rosie Perez, nice to see you) all find themselves on the wrong end of a sizable bounty, and things get messy.
Shuffle: Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves
The badass girl power isn’t limited to the cast. Director Cathy Yan (Dead Pigs) serves up an irresistible cocktail of Scott Pilgrim visual flair and Tarantino continuity clash. Yan seems to relish the freedom of an R-rating (see “face-peeling” above), crafting memorable set pieces bursting with slick fight choreography, cartoonishly satisfying violence and wonderfully stylish pandemonium.
Shuffle: Respect
As Hope’s dad told the many Madden girls growing up: eyes, nose, throat, groin, knees are all equally vulnerable no matter the size of the attacker. Yan appears to be the sister we didn’t know about, but she certainly knows how to hurt a guy.
Writer Christina Hodson has become the go-to for ridiculous franchises that need more than we dare hope (she’s the one who wrote the only Transformers movie that didn’t suck). She teams well with Yan and her badasses, offering backstories and traumas that toe the line between superhero/supervillain legend and shit women deal with every day.
If you saw the stale trailer, noted the deadly release date, remembered the limp Suicide Squad and feared the worse, we hear ya. And maybe Birds of Prey benefits slightly from low expectations. But there’s no denying the raucous, foul mouthed, glitter-bomb fun.
Shuffle: Free Bird (live version).
Fearless Oscar Picks
by Hope Madden and George Wolf
It fills us with glee to look back on a year brimming with so many great movies. Original movies, even! Jojo Rabbit—that was unique. The Farewell, Marriage Story, Knives Out, The Lighthouse, Parasite, The Souvenir, Uncut Gems, Us, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Last Black Man in San Francisco—it’s a long list, and not all of the entries made it as far as an Oscar nomination (unfortunate!). But they did make for a fascinating year.
We have only a handful of complaints about this year’s batch of nominees, but we really want to point out how impressed we are with the animation nominees: two excellent blockbusters (Toy Story 4 and How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World) plus three outstanding and entirely underseen animated gems (Missing Link, I Lost My Body, Klaus). Whenever the Academy leads people to find great films they might have missed, they’re doing their job.
On the whole we expect the 2020 awards to be somewhat predictable. Luckily, on the whole, we also think the awards will go where they should.
Our picks for Oscar, 2020:
Best Adapted Screenplay
- Steven Zaillian, The Irishman
- Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit
- Todd Phillips, Joker
- Greta Gerwig, Little Women
- Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes
We begin with the one category that feels undecided. While we are semi-confident in our picks, we also think Jojo Rabbit could hop away with gold.
Should Win: Greta Gerwig, Little Women
Will Win: Greta Gerwig, Little Women
Best Original Screenplay
- Rian Johnson, Knives Out
- Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
- Sam Mendes, 1917
- Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
- Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
Should Win: Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
Will Win: Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
Best Supporting Actress
- Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell
- Laura Dern, Marriage Story
- Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit
- Florence Pugh, Little Women
- Margot Robbie, Bombshell
Although it would not break our hearts to see Scarlett Johansson win this one for her tender, lovely turn as mom to the cutest little Nazi ever…
Should Win: Laura Dern, Marriage Story
Will Win: Laura Dern, Marriage Story
Best Supporting Actor
- Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
- Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes
- Al Pacino, The Irishman
- Joe Pesci, The Irishman
- Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Should Win: Joe Pesci, playing against type and delivering a quietly powerful turn that’s the heartbeat of Scorsese’s film.
Will Win: Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Good news – another top-notch acceptance speech!
Because we want to make you wait for it, and because you might need some help with other buckets in your poll…
Best Documentary
- American Factory, Julia Riechert & Steve Bognar
- The Cave, Feras Fayyad
- The Edge of Democracy, Petra Casta
- For Sama, Waad al-Kateab
- Honeyland, Ljubo Stevanov
Here’s a fantastic category. Make it your mission to see each one of these films.
Should Win: Honeyland
Will Win: In a rare split decision, Hope predicts Honeyland; George predicts American Factory.
Best International Feature
- Corpus Cristi (Poland)
- Honeyland (North Macedonia)
- Les Miserables (France)
- Pain and Glory (Spain)
- Parasite (South Korea)
Should Win: Parasite
Will Win: Parasite
Best Animated Feature
- How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
- I Lost My Body
- Klaus
- Missing Link
- Toy Story 4
Should Win: Toy Story 4
Will Win: Toy Story 4, but really, we all win with this group of movies. But Toy Story 4 better win.
Best Cinematography
- Rodrigo Prieto, The Irishman
- Lawrence Sher, Joker
- Jarin Blaschke, The Lighthouse
- Robert Richardson, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
- Roger Deakins, 1917
Should Win: Jarin Blaschke, The Lighthouse
Will Win: Roger Deakins, 1917
Best Original Song
- “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away” (Toy Story 4) — Randy Newman
- “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” (Rocketman) — Elton John & Bernie Taupin
- “I’m Standing With You” (Breakthrough) — Diane Warren
- “Into the Unknown” (Frozen 2) — Robert Lopez & Kristen Anderson-Lopez
- “Stand Up” (Harriet) — Joshuah Brian Campbell & Cynthia Erivo
Should Win: Elton & Bernie
Will Win: John & Taupin
OK, on to what you’re here for.
Best Actress
- Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
- Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
- Saoirse Ronan, Little Women
- Charlize Theron, Bombshell
- Renee Zellweger, Judy
Should Win: Renee Zellweger, Judy
Will Win: Renee Zellweger, Judy
Best Actor
- Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
- Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
- Adam Driver, Marriage Story
- Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
- Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes
Should Win: We would not weep to see Adam Driver take this one home, but he won’t and we’re not that upset because Joaquin Phoenix was astonishing.
Will Win: Joaquin Phoenix
Best Director
- Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
- Todd Phillips, Joker
- Sam Mendes, 1917
- Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
- Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
Should Win: Bong Joon Ho makes a great case with his nearly perfect film.
Will Win: Sam Mendes, 1917
Best Picture
- Ford v Ferrari
- The Irishman
- Jojo Rabbit
- Joker
- Little Women
- Marriage Story
- 1917
- Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
- Parasite
Should: Parasite
Will: 1917
The 92 annual Academy Awards will be held this Sunday, February 9th, and aired live on ABC.
I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of February 3
A lot of horror available this week, plus one indie drama that will leave you broken in side and one horrible Christmas movie – does that count?
Let us help you through the decision process. Click the film title to link to the full review.
Doctor Sleep
Waves
Last Christmas
The Nightingale (DVD)
The House that Jack Built (DVD)
Good Beat, You Can Dance To It
The Rhythm Section
by George Wolf
The sexy assassin. The beautiful killing machine.
The Rhythm Section plays a tune that’s lately been as popular as Taylor Swift at the high school talent show. But hey, there’s still a ways to go before it catches up to the macho men, so have at it ladies, the right arrangement can always find some swing in the mustiest of standards.
Blake Lively is Stephanie, a top student at Oxford who falls hard after losing her family to an airplane bomber. How hard? She’s an addict and a prostitute, but her destructive spiral finds a new avenue when an investigative reporter seeks her out.
He’s on the trail of the terrorist responsible for the bombing, and Stephanie’s cooperation sets a chain of events in motion that quickly lead to an ex MI-6 operative (Jude Law) training her to be a killer.
And why would he do that, exactly?
Keep that question at bay and you’ll find a serviceable thriller that hits plenty of familiar beats, but is always kept watchable through Lively’s committed performance.
Screenwriter Mark Burnell adapts his own novel as a globe-trotting exercise in exorcising your demons. And while multiple character motivations can get murky, the relationship between Stephanie and her mysterious mentor is always engaging.
Director Reed Morano (I Think We’re Alone Now, TV projects such as The Handmaid’s Tale and Halt and Catch Fire) can stage a nifty fight scene and breathless car chase, but she too often seems desperately in search of a definitive style that never finds a groove.
While soundtrack choices and soft focus flashbacks feel forced, Morano’s detached treatment of Lively’s physical appearance may be the most original pillar in the film. Though her role is plenty physical and Lively never shrinks from it, even the obligatory “red sparrow” sequence offers an overdue counterpoint to the usual leering camera served up by Morano’s male counterparts.
Expect the usual questions of “who can I trust” and the usual fine performance from Sterling K. Brown (that guy’s busy), who shows up as an ex-CIA agent with valuable contacts.
But most of all, expect Lively to keep The Rhythm Section humming, even when it’s set on repeat.
Glass Houses
The Edge of Democracy
by George Wolf
Documentaries can often be judged by how successful they are at showing us unfamiliar worlds.
But for the Oscar-nominated The Edge of Democracy, it is the familiarity of the story it tells that makes it so heartbreakingly urgent, as it wraps a personal memoir around a first hand account of Brazil’s fragile hold on democracy.
Veteran documentarian Petra Costa (Omar & the Seagull, Undertow Eyes), whose own parents risked their lives protesting Brazil’s military dictatorship, narrates the film with much personal insight, starting with her feeling that she and Brazilian democracy “have grown up together.”
Taking power through a U.S.-backed coup in 1964, a succession of generals ruled Brazil until 1985, when the Workers Party began to take hold, thanks in large part to union leader Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, who was finally elected president in 2002.
Costa, backed up by a string of working class Brazilians, speaks in glowing terms of the economic progress made under Lula, and we see no less than Barack Obama dub him “the most popular politician on Earth.”
Indeed, Lula left office in 2010 with an 87 percent approval rating, when his hand-picked successor, former militant Dilma Rousseff, won the presidency. Three years later the economy stumbled, Dilma announced a crackdown on corruption, and the knives came out.
Even then, not many would have thought it possible for the democracy Brazilians long fought for to succumb so easily to primal populism, or for Jair Bolsonaro, a bigoted, hostile, “fake news” decrying candidate who began as a joke, to be elected president in 2018.
But here we are.
Costa’s passion for her cause is weary but evident, and her earnest narration often asks us to assume much without pausing to consider any contrasting evaluations of what she dubs “the coup of 2016.”
That’s not to say Dilma’s ouster doesn’t stink to high Heaven – it does – but it also isn’t hard to find accusations against the Workers Party that don’t seem that flimsy, and while the one-sided approach is in line with the film’s personal journey, it leaves the documentary side wanting.
But Costa’s ultimate success comes from weaving her family’s story into the political tumult of her homeland, and in turn mirroring a more global struggle. We get a stark illustration of the rising tides of authoritarianism, leaving the Edge of Democracy a film that should be pretty damn personal to all of us.
I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of January 27
Excellent week in lazybags theater. Stay inside and watch the best film of 2019, one hell of a performance, and an unreasonably underseen action flick in which Schwarzenegger gets off the funniest line of his career.
Do it.
Click the film title to link to the full review.
Parasite
Harriet
Terminator: Dark Fate
Screening Room: Gentlemen, Turning, Color Out of Space, Les Miserables, Clemency
Rumble in the Jungle
The Gentlemen
by George Wolf
If nothing else, Guy Ritchie and his Gentlemen are not lacking in self-confidence. This is a film, and a filmmaker, anxious to prove the old guys can still cut it, and that any young upstart who thinks otherwise has a painful lesson coming.
Ritchie returns to the testosterone-laden, subtitle-needin’ bloody British gangster comedy terrain of Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels – the early films that still define him – for a stylish ride through a violent jungle with a man who’s not sure he still wants to be King.
Matthew McConaughey is Mickey Pearson, an American Rhodes Scholar who put his brains to work in the drug trade, utilizing a string of expansive British estates to build an underground network that controls the supply of “bush” aka “supercheese” aka weed.
But now it seems he’s ready for a quiet life of leisure with wife Roz (Michelle Dockery), and offers to sell his entire operation to brilliant criminal nerd Matthew (Jeremy Strong) for a sizable sum.
As Matthew is mulling, Roz smells “fuckery afoot,” and she smells wisely.
There’s plenty, and a PI named Fletcher (Hugh Grant) thinks he has it all figured out, so much so that he visits Ray (Charlie Hunnam), Mickey’s number two, with an offer to save Mickey’s hide…in exchange for a hefty fee.
Ya follow? There’s plenty more, and it’s all spelled out via the screenplay Fletcher has conveniently written. As Fletcher joyously outlines the plot to Ray (and us) over scotches and steaks, Ritchie uses the device to play with possible threads, backtrack, and start again.
The Gentlemen is not just meta. As the double crosses and corpses mount, it becomes shamelessly meta, a sometimes engaging, other times tiresome romp buoyed by slick visual style and committed performances (especially Grant and Hunnam), but marred by self-satisfaction and stale humor that might have been less tone deaf a decade ago.
You get the feeling that after a marriage to Madonna and some big Hollywood franchise films (Sherlock Homes, Aladdin), Ritchie is out to prove he hasn’t gone soft with a little raucous, chest-beating fun.
But while The Gentlemen does show Ritchie’s way with a camera can still be impressive, its best parts only add up to a fraction of their promise.
I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of January 20
Couple of familiar franchises with new material for you to watch from the comfort of your couch this week. One is worth it.
Click the film title to link to the full review.
Zombieland: Double Tap
The Addams Family
