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Funny How?

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The Comedian

by George Wolf

Let me just admit something right now. I’m the guy who thought Robert DeNiro had some funny moments as the Dirty Grandpa.

Now DeNiro is The Comedian and..anybody seen Grandpa?

One of the curious aspects of the film is that even though it’s more of a character study than an outright comedy, that character is a legendary comic who’s not really that funny.

DeNiro stars as Jackie Burke, an insult comedian who hit it big back in the day with a smash TV sitcom. Nowadays, he chides his manager (Edie Falco) for the meager gigs while resenting fans who just want to hear him repeat his old TV catch phrase. An encounter with an aggressive heckler goes viral, and suddenly Jackie is hot again..while serving 30 days for assault.

He meets Harmony (Leslie Mann) while fulfilling community service hours, and director Taylor Hackford dutifully kicks off a series of situations in search of greater cohesion.

As Jackie and Harmony go to comedy clubs, weddings, and dinner, Jackie is always cajoled into doing a quick routine that isn’t nearly as impressive and everyone tells him it is. By the time Jackie goes viral again with a retirement home performance of a parody song about “making poopie,” the antics are more embarrassing than amusing.

An old school comic facing the truth that “being funny isn’t enough anymore” could have been fertile ground for a more layered, meaningful character. The Comedian isn’t interested. Veteran standup comics are among the film’s writers, comedy consultants, and cameo stars, but the script never gives Hackford the ammo to dig any more than surface deep.

What Hackford does have is a talented cast (including Danny DeVito, Harvey Keitel, Patti LuPone and Cloris Leachman), and he keeps all the actors engaged enough to deliver terrific performances, regardless of screen time. That’s about the best reason to see The Comedian, a film that seems content to put off getting its act together in favor of just wandering around backstage.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLQXUmzXuEo

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Attention Must Be Paid

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The Salesman (Forushande)

by George Wolf

It should surprise no one familiar with Asghar Farhadi that the filmmaker is a former playwright. In films such as About Ely, The Past and the Oscar-winning A Separation, Farhadi, as both writer and director, has shown sharp instincts for building quiet tension through insightful, deliberately paced dialog.

His latest, The Salesman, is no exception, as Farhadi returns to his stage roots in crafting a meaningful parallel between a classic American play and an Iranian couple whose marriage is frayed by a traumatic incident.

Emad (Shahab Hosseini), a high school teacher, and his wife Rana (Taraneh Etesami) are starring in a community theatre production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman when they are forced to flee their apartment building as it crumbles around them. After renting a new apartment from one of their co-stars in the play, a dangerous occurrence involving the previous tenant drives a wedge of guilt and anger between husband and wife.

While The Salesman may lean on contrivance a whisper more than usual, Farhadi again uses intimate conflicts to explore more universal themes of gender and class, and he again delivers a screenplay with minimal filler. Buoyed by resonant performances from the two leads, each line of dialog is carefully placed for maximum impact, while Farhadi weaves Miller’s work into the narrative for a poignant undercurrent of generational clash in a changing world.

Though the classic “attention must be paid” speech occurs relatively early in Death of a Salesman, Farhadi confidently builds his film toward a third act reflecting similar themes. All of us, no matter what may have occurred in the past, deserve basic human dignity.

Sadly ironic, then, that if The Salesman earns Farhadi his second Academy Award, he won’t be there to accept it. The Iranian filmmaker has said he won’t attend even if “exceptions were made” to recent immigration directives, and his work must stand as a testament to the increasingly shaky ground of our own foundations.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

Fright Club

Fright Club: Skeletons in the Closet – Oscar Edition

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It is that time again – the time of year where the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honors the best of the best, and we honor the worst of those best.

Yes, Skeletons in the Closet: Oscar Edition is back. It’s the day we dig around in Oscar nominee closets to find those low budget, horror bones hiding behind the fancier schmancier stuff.

And we can always find them. The great Viola Davis wasted her talent in the Rear Window/Fright Night knock-off Disturbia. The also-great Michael Shannon spent some time early in his career in the actually quite decent Dead Birds, while Ryan Gosling co-starred in the intriguingly titled Frankenstein and Me. Meanwhile, Octavia Spencer slummed it up in Pulse.

But there’s worse – and yet, somehow better – material to discuss. Here are our favorite not-good horror hiding in these A-listers’ closets.

5. Denzel Washington: The Bone Collector (1999)

Denzel! Just a year after the serial Oscar nominee and winner made the dark action thriller Fallen – not good, but not bad – he returned to the land of CSI with The Bone Collector. Must’ve had an itch to scratch.

In Phillip Noyce’s grim police procedural, Washington plays a quadriplegic homicide detective helping beat cop Angelina Jolie track down a serial killer who’s leaving grisly victims and frustrating clues.

Plus, Queen Latifah!

The film is bland, Noyce never able to focus on a physically immobile hero and still create an exciting pace. And yet, Washington commands your attention no matter how listless the scene or unlikely the rest of the casting.

4. Michelle Williams, Halloween 20: H20 (1998)

It’s been 20 years since Michael Myers escaped his confines and slaughtered all those people in Haddonfield. Thousands of miles away in a private school in Northern California, Laurie Strode and her brother come face to face again.

Who was excited? Back in 1998, we were. Jamie Lee Curtis was back, and we were allowed to forget Halloweens 3 – 6 ever happened. Plus – though he’s no John Carpenter – director Steve Minor does have a history with horror, and Curtis’s iconic mom Janet Leigh popped by.

The result was slick, and boasted a great deal more talent than the others: Alan Arkin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and 2017 Oscar nom Michelle Williams. The 4-time Oscar nominee was saddled with the one-dimensional sweetheart role, and though you’d never have known she’d one day be among the most talented performers in film, you knew she was too good for this movie.

3. Jeff Bridges: The Vanishing (1993)

In 1988, co-writer/director George Sluizer unleashed a daring, meticulous and devastating film on an unsuspecting world. Spoorloos asked you to follow a grieving boyfriend down a rabbit hole – one with no escape.

Five years later, Sluizer returned to the scene of the crime, current Oscar-nominee Jeff Bridges in tow. Bridges plays just an ordinary guy indulging a particular fantasy. Unfortunately, Bernrd-Pierre Donnadieu played the same ordinary guy to far, far more believable and therefore chilling effect back in ’88.

Worse still, the fantasy itself is gutted with an “America’s not ready for the real thing” ending that just makes you want to kick a guy. Infuriating!

2. Viggo Mortensen: The Prophecy (1995)

This is one of those bad movies that is fun to watch. Somehow the unusually talent-stacked cast doesn’t feel wasted as much as it does weirdly placed.

There is no question this film belongs to Christopher Walken – as do all films in which he graces the screen. His natural weirdness and uncanny comic timing make the film more memorable than it deserves to be, but when it comes to sinister, Oscar nominee Viggo Mortensen cuts quite a figure as Lucifer.

Unseemly, gorgeous and evil, he seethes through his few scenes and leaves the celluloid scorched.

1. Casey affleck: Soul Survivors (2001)

Good God, this one’s bad.

Writer/director Steve Carpenter – auteur behind such classics as The Dorm that Dripped Blood – somehow convinced talent to join this cast. Who? A post-American Beauty Wes Bentley, an established Luke Wilson, and pre-Oscar nominee Casey Affleck.

Affleck stars as the tragically dead (or is he?) boyfriend of Cassie (Melissa Sagemiller) an awkward runner. (Yes, it’s tangential to any reasonable conversation about the film, but she runs in nearly every scene and I have never seen a more awkward runner.)

Who’s alive? Who’s dead? What’s happening? Well, in case you’ve been lobotomized and can’t keep up, luckily Father Jude (Wilson) will literally explain everything.

Still, Affleck is somehow not terrible.

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Personal Politics

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Jackie

by George Wolf

Director Pablo Larrain disregards traditional biopic structure and reshapes it to hypnotic effect in Jackie, a challenging portrait of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy as she struggles with the shock and grief of her husband’s assassination.

Anchored by a committed, luminous lead performance from Natalie Portman, Jackie emerges as a surreal character study layered with the intimacy of a soul struggling to balance public demands with private resentment.

With one of history’s most famous women as his subject, Larrain (Neruda, Tony Manero) wisely narrows his focus to these watershed moments, adding unspoken gravitas to the film through what we already know about the rest of Mrs. Kennedy’s life. In the whirlwind of November 1963, she had a husband to honor, children to reassure, and a future to guard.

Armed with a confident screenplay from Noah Oppenheim, Larrain is able to carve piercing insight from an unobtrusive viewpoint. He pivots from grand, showy tableaus to hushed privacy, deftly reinforcing the weight of the dueling identities at work inside Camelot. Portman is an understated wonder, making Jackie’s mournful devastation cut as deep as the jaded wisdom she grants an inquiring journalist (an excellent Billy Crudup).

A meticulous, complex statement buoyed by vital history and raw humanity, Jackie defiantly delivers on an uncompromising vision of a story we know well, but can never understand.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

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My Lives as a Dog

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A Dog’s Purpose

by George Wolf

Dogs sure are cute, and they can teach us many things. Apparently, though, subtlety and the tenets of reincarnation are not among them.

A Dog’s Purpose, based on the novel by W. Bruce Cameron, follows the various lives of a pooch first known as Bailey, a Michigan farm dog growing up happily in the 1960s after young Ethan rescues the Retriever pup from a hot car. From there, Bailey becomes a Chicago K9 Shepherd named Ellie, then a cute Corgi in 1980s Georgia, and back to Michigan as one of those unfortunate dogs tied to a tree all day.

The dog’s soul (voiced with overdone preciousness by Josh Gad) remains constant throughout, and constantly serves as an eager-to-please Captain Obvious. Imagine walking by a man vomiting as his sad-eyed dog remarks, “oh, he must be sick.” Now imagine it for ninety minutes.

Director Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat, The Cider House Rules) and writer Cathryn Michon draw each character and every situation with the most broad, most one-dimensional brushes available, efficiently plowing through a checklist of contrived plot points seemingly chosen for utmost manipulation potential. Even a modest farmhouse isn’t complete without a picture perfect crescent moon above it, situated like the northern star in a cloudless sky.

Framing the story through the simplicity of a canine viewpoint may have been a worthwhile goal at some point, but the mix of melodramatic schmaltz and slapstick comedy (dog on the loose at a fancy dinner!) quickly becomes overbearing. Yes, the pets are lovable, but ultimately a film aimed at dog lovers develops the foul odor of exploiting what it claims to celebrate.

The recent video alleging animal abuse during filming is also a concern (trainers have claimed the video was falsely edited), but trust me, there are plenty of other reasons to avoid A Dog’s Purpose.

Verdict-1-5-Stars

 

 

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Meat is Meat

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We Are the Flesh

by Hope Madden

Are you squeamish?

This is actually the first question my friend was asked in an interview for an internship with a meat packing plant, but it’s also a good piece of self-reflection before you sit down to We Are the Flesh.

First time feature writer/director Emiliano Rocha Minter announces his presence with authority – and a lot of body fluids – in this carnal horror show.

A hellish vision if ever there was one, the film opens on a filthy man with a lot of packing tape. He’s taking different types of nastiness, taping it inside a plastic drum to ferment, and eventually turning it into a drink or a drug. Hard to tell – loud drum banging follows, as well as hallucinations and really, really deep sleep.

During that sleep we meet two siblings, a teenaged brother and sister who’ve stumbled into the abandoned building where the hermit lives.

What happens next? What doesn’t?! Incest, cannibalism, a lot of shared body fluids of every manner, rape, maybe some necrophilia – depending on your perspective – a lot of stuff, none of it pleasant.

Minter has created a fever dream as close to hell as anything we’ve seen since last year’s Turkish nightmare Baskin.

Had Minter not found an anchor for the overwhelmingly lurid imagery, his movie would have felt like little more than self-indulgent horror porn (like literally horror and porn).

Noé Hernández conjures a goblin-like image, his unblinking eyes and demonic grin permanent fixtures as he mentors his teenage charges in his repellant ways. The boy he’s dubbed Skeletor (Diego Gamaleil) resists, though his consistently surprising sister (María Evoli) is less inhibited.

There’s little chance you’ll watch this film in its entirety without diverting your eyes – whether your concern is the problematic sexuality or just the onslaught of viscous secretions, the screen is a slurry of shit you don’t really want to see.

What opens as a post-apocalyptic hellscape eventually morphs into a social comment on Mexico City’s disposable population, which is both the film’s strength and its weakness.

Unfortunately, though Minter’s movie boasts deeply unnerving ideas and compelling performances, in light of other Mexican filmmakers making social commentaries – Jorge Michel Grau’s brilliant 2010 We Are What We Are, in particular – We Are the Flesh comes up slightly lacking.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnTY6q7bt78

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Let’s Talk Oscar Nominations…

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By Hope Madden and George Wolf

2016 was a fairly weak, fairly bland year at the movies, but it still has surprises in store for us. Look at this…Suicide Squad is nominated for an Oscar! Okay, it’s for makeup and hairstyling – who knew that rolling around Hot Topic could translate to an Oscar nomination?

The official Academy Award nominations had few other surprises in store. La La Land racked up quite a haul of noms, most of which are likely to translate to statuettes. What’s the lowdown? Who should have made the list? Who shouldn’t have? Let us walk you through it.

 

Best Film

Arrival

Fences

Hacksaw Ridge

Hell or High Water

Hidden Figures

La La Land

Lion

Manchester by the Sea

Moonlight

Snubs: Zootopia, Jungle Book, The Witch, The Lobster, Jackie, Loving – there’s a bunch we’d have included instead of Lion, Hidden Figures or Hacksaw Ridge. Not that those are bad films – they are quite good. Just not as deserving.

 

Best Director

Denis Villeneuve, Arrival

Mel Gibson, Hacksaw Ridge

Damien Chazelle, La La Land

Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea

Barry Jenkins, Moonlight

Snubs: No question Mel Gibson is out of his league here. While Hacksaw Ridge was a fine piece of filmmaking, it almost works in spite of Gibson’s direction. He begins with a Hallmark card then descends into carnage few other filmmakers care to capture. But the performances and the genuine merit of the story keep the film interesting. It’s not the direction, which is why we’d have honored David Mackenzie and his glorious direction for Hell or High Water instead.

 

Best Actress

Isabelle Huppert, Elle

Ruth Negga, Loving

Natalie Portman, Jackie

Emma Stone, La La Land

Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

Snubs: It’s hard to even form this sentence, but Meryl Streep should not be on this list. We know! Blasphemy! But the pool for Best Actress is rarely this deep, and Annette Bening (20th Century Women) Rebecca Hall (Christine), or Amy Adams (Arrival) would have been better choices.

 

Best Actor

Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea

Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge

Ryan Gosling, La La Land

Viggo Mortensen,  Captain Fantastic

Denzel Washington, Fences

Snubs: Not much to complain about here. The race is basically Affleck V Washington, with Affleck coming out on top, but we could have accepted Tom Hanks (Sully) or Nate Parker (The Birth of a Nation) in Garfield’s spot.

 

Best Supporting Actress

Viola Davis, Fences

Naomie Harris, Moonlight

Nicole Kidman,  Lion

Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures

Michelle Williams,  Manchester by the Sea

Snubs: Here’s a weird yet valid complaint: the smart money’s on Viola Davis to win, but how in the hell is this a supporting role? Not only is Davis the only female on the screen for 9/10 of Fences, she has more screen time than Denzel. It’s her story. She’s not just the lead actress, she’s the lead. And her performance is more than strong enough to take home the best actress Oscar.

 

Best Supporting Actor

Mahershala Ali,  Moonlight

Jeff Bridges,  Hell or High Water

Lucas Hedges, Manchester by the Sea

Dev Patel, Lion

Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals

Snubs: First of all, amen to Michael Shannon. We could not be more pleased to see him hit this list. And halleluiah to Mahershala Ali – the likely front runner in the category.

We’d have given Dev Patel’s slot to Shannon’s Nocturnal Animals co-star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ben Foster outshined his full slate of talented co-stars in Hell or High Water. He deserves Jeff Bridges’s spot.

 

Original Screenplay

Taylor Sheridan, Hell or High Water

Damien Chazelle, La La Land

Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, The Lobster

Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea

Mike Mills, 20th Century Women

Snub: This is a very solid and admirable list. Mike Mills’s 20th Century Women is brilliantly written and performed. We might swap him out, though, and give his spot to Robert Eggers’s The Witch.

 

Adapted Screenplay

Eric Heisserer, Arrival

August Wilson, Fences

Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi, Hidden Figures

Luke Davies, Lion

Barry Jenkins, Moonlight

Snubs: Hidden Figures and Lion were well put-together, lovely films. But in this year of searing, searching, brilliant writing, they have no place in this list. In their stead? Whit Stillman’s wicked and wonderful Love & Friendship and Tom Ford’s story within a story Nocturnal Animals.

 

Cinematography

Arrival

La La Land

Lion

Moonlight

Silence

Snubs: Chan-wook Park’s gloriously wrong The Handmaiden looked better than anything else that came out this year. It shouldn’t just be nominated, it should win. But it certainly should be perched in this category in Lion’s spot.

 

Foreign Language

Land of Mine

A Man Called Ove

The Salesman

Tanna

Toni Erdmann

Snubs: Again, where is the love for The Handmaiden? And the bigger surprise may be Elle, which nabbed a Best Actress nomination.

 

Documentary Feature

Fire at Sea

I Am Not Your Negro

Life, Animated

OJ: Made in America

13th

Snubs: Nope. Not a one. Every single one of these is required viewing. We’re hoping for some ties.

 

Animated Feature

Kubo and the Two Strings

Moana

The Red Turtle

Zootopia

My Life as a Zucchini

Snubs: No Finding Dory? We’re not sure that’s a snub, but it means no Pixar in this category, and we’ll call that a surprise.

We’ll have our official predictions a little closer to the Feb. 26th Oscar ceremony.

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Behind the Bun

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The Founder

by George Wolf

Two brothers, innovators in the food service industry, look on in despair as the sign is removed from above their beloved business. They no longer own their last name because, in Dick McDonald’s words, they “let a fox in the henhouse.”

That fox was Ray Kroc, and The Founder is director John Lee Hancock’s faithful dissection of how Kroc turned the McDonald brothers’ California burger stand into the worldwide behemoth that now feeds one percent of the global population every single day.

Michael Keaton is fantastic as Kroc, as he crafts an intensely driven man who listens to positive-thinking albums and becomes a living testament to the mantra of “persistence.” Dick and Mac McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch, respectively – both terrific) had the business insight that was years ahead of its time, but Kroc had the vision, along with the fortitude and dog-eat-dog mentality to see that vision through. Keaton makes him a pathetically fascinating hero, possessed with winning at any cost.

So, an egocentric businessman with questionable ethics stops at nothing to attain a position of incredible wealth and power? Timely.

It is, and Hancock skips the opportunities in Robert Siegel’s script to give his film more teeth. Siegel also wrote Big Fan and The Wrestler, so he knows his way around finding the dark edges of the American dream. Though the rise of McDonalds is layered with very relevant threads (crass commercialism, innovation displacing employment, etc.), Hancock, per his resume (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks) isn’t interested in exploring anything on that menu.

The Founder tells the story, and tells it in fine clinical fashion, but misses the chance to go big time.

Those McDonald boys can relate.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH3b6bs8llA

 

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Not the Boss of Me

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Trespass Against Us

by George Wolf

Two great actors going toe to toe. Trespass Against Us may be a strangely unfocused crime drama/comedy, but it does bring Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson together, and that’s far from criminal.

Gleeson is Colby “Cole” Cutler, who heads a family band of tramps and thieves camped in the British countryside and committed to a life of robbing the wealthy while taunting the police. Fassbender is Chad Cutler, the eldest son looking for a way out. Like everyone else, Chad is scared to confront his old man, but as his own son is becoming a young man, Chad begins secretly plotting a path that might give his boy the chance at a different life.

In this narrative feature debut for both director Adam Smith and screenwriter Alastair Siddons, familiar themes are brought to the surface without giving the fine ensemble cast enough ammunition to make any meaningful statement. In fact, it’s hard to pin down the purpose for any particular course the film takes, other than generating a respectful shoulder shrug.

Chad’s wife Kelly (a terrific Lyndsey Marshall) is tired of waiting for her husband to make his move, and though we see both tension and affection throughout the extended family, the film never really breaks from a bystander’s point of view. These are clearly complicated relationships with loyalties that have shifted over the years, but they’re all kept at arm’s length, rendering Trespass Against Us a well-performed curiosity.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4CUb6hwQv4

 

 

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The Beast in Me

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Split

by George Wolf

Yes, Split is the latest from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan, and no, you’ll never see it coming.

You know what I mean. And Shyamalan knows you know what I mean. So, while you’re trying to guess what surprise twist he’s got in store for you, a nifty psychological thriller plays out, elevated by a transfixing performance from James McAvoy.

After years of misfires, Shyamalan got his groove back by scaling back two years ago with The Visit, an enjoyable bit of lightly scary fun that amounted to one giant misdirection. With Split, the director himself is the main misdirection, as his reputation pushes you to chase something that may not be there at all.

McAvoy is Kevin, a deeply troubled man harboring 23 distinct personalities and some increasingly chilling behavior. When he kidnaps the teenaged Casey (The Witch‘s Anya Taylor-Joy) and her two friends (Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Suva), the girls are faced with constantly changing identities as they desperately seek an escape from their disorienting confines.

Meanwhile, one of Kevin’s personalities is making emergency appointments with his longtime therapist (Betty Buckley, nice to see you), only to show up and assure the Dr. everything is fine. She thinks otherwise, and she is right.

The split personality trope has been used to eye-rolling effect in enough films to be the perfect device for Shyamalan’s clever rope-a-dope. By often splitting the frame with intentional set designs and camera angles, or by letting full face closeups linger one extra beat, he reinforces the psychological creepiness without any excess bloodshed that would have soiled a PG-13 rating.

Still, it all might have gone for naught without McAvoy, who manages to make Kevin a sympathetic character while deftly dancing between identities, often in the same take. He’s a wonder to watch, and the solid support from Buckley and Taylor-Joy help keep the tension simmering through speedbumps in pacing and questionable flashbacks to Casey’s childhood.

Maybe the best case for this new Shyamalan surprise is the fact that even without the kicker, Split would hold up as a competent, emotionally disquieting thriller. But when you add that final reveal?

I see happy people.

Verdict-3-5-Stars