Dogs and more dogs this week! Join us in the Screening Room to talk through all that’s new in theaters and home entertainment.
Listen to the full podcast HERE.
Tag Archives: movie reviews
Meaningful Suffering
Trail by Fire
by George Wolf
Another death row drama with a clear agenda, probing one questionable conviction to build a righteously angry condemnation of our entire justice system?
Yes, Trail by Fire is certainly that, but the familiarity of its gripping narrative actually serves to strengthen the argument. How many dubious death sentences will it take to shake our comfortable faith in fair trials?
In 1992, Texan Cameron Todd Willingham (Jack O’Connell) was sent to death row for setting the house fire that killed his three young children.
After years in prison, concerned citizen Elizabeth Gilbert (Laura Dern) took an interest in the case. Along with lawyers from the Innocence Project, Gilbert worked to poke enough holes in the conviction to get Willingham a new trial.
Adapted from a New Yorker magazine article and Willingham’s own letters from prison, the committed script from Geoffrey Fletcher (Precious) suffers only in the rushed introduction of Gilbert’s character. But though any organic motivation for Liz’s commitment may be thin, it’s overcome by the sterling performances from the two leads.
O’Connell – a vastly underrated talent- is heartbreakingly effective as Willingham, a man happy to have a regular visitor but wary of the hope Liz brings with her.
His journey from slacker defiance to jailhouse wisdom is grounded in the authenticity of McConnell’s touching performance. This man was no altar boy, but our sympathy for him is well-earned.
The chemistry with Dern is evident from the start. While these plexiglass encounters are a necessary staple of this genre, Dern and McConnell make them simmer with an intensity that is often riveting.
Kudos, too, to Emily Meade as Willingham’s wife Stacy. The Willingham marriage was challenging, to say the least, and Meade (Nerve, Boardwalk Empire, The Deuce) is good enough to make the conflicted relationship recall the bare emotions of Manchester by the Sea.
Director Edward Zwick (Glory, Blood Diamond, Pawn Sacrifice) takes some narrative risks that ultimately pay off, keeping the pace vital through some effective visual storytelling that feeds the sense of a ticking clock.
Zwick also builds layers of indelible support characters (Willingham’s first jail cell neighbor, the lead prison guard, an independent arson investigator) that leave engaging marks, often at junctures critical to avoiding an overly rote structure.
Crushing in its familiarity, gut wrenching in its specifics, Trial by Fire is a tough but worthy reminder of the illusion of fairness.
Screening Room: Detective Pikachu, The Hustle, Tolkien, Poms, Wild Nights with Emily, Hail Satan?, Charlie Says, Dogman
Woah – loads and loads of new movies out this week. Some of them good, some bad, all discussed on the podcast.
Listen HERE.
I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of May 6
What to watch this week? Well, please start with the best documentary to be released in ages, then hit on a criminally underseen music biopic. After that, the choosing gets tougher, but let us be a guide.
Click the film title for the full review.
They Shall Not Grow Old (DVD)
Blaze
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
The Prodigy
What Men Want
Screening Room: Long Shot, UglyDolls, The Intruder, Her Smell, The River and the Wall, Ask Dr. Ruth
A lot of new movies opening in Edgame’s aftermath. We talk through the good, the bad, the ugly, the missable and what’s new in home entertainment, including Long Shot, UglyDolls, The Intruder, Her Smell, The River and the Wall and Ask Dr. Ruth.
Listen to the full podcast HERE.
Annie Are You Okay?
The Intruder
by George Wolf
If you caught Dennis Quaid creeping around your house on numerous occasions, would you be scared, or just figure he was bringing over some mac and cheese?
Quaid might be one of the ultimate likable dudes, and his playing waaay against type is one of promising threads that The Intruder squanders in its warmed over dish of jump scares and borrowed ideas.
Beautiful couple Scott (Michael Ealy) and Annie (Meagan Good) are living the good life in San Francisco, but Annie feels it’s time they move to the country and start a family. She finds her dream house at the Napa Valley home of Charlie Peck (Quaid), and as quickly as you can say “overly rushed setup,” they’re moving in.
Charlie says he’s selling to head South, so why is he still coming over to mow the lawn, assist with the Christmas decorations, and find reasons to be alone with Annie?
Whaddya bet he’s not really retiring to Florida, or that some guy at Scott’s office would like nothing better than dig into Charlie’s past to find what he’s hiding?
Director Deon Taylor (Traffik) and writer David Loughery (Lakeview Terrace) are both treading familiar ground, too much on autopilot to successfully mine the contrasts they introduce.
It’s old ways versus new, city versus country, and a red hat wearing white guy terrorizing a black couple.
That’s plenty to chew on, but everyone goes hungry while characters make one idiotic decision after another on the subtlety-free ride to a finale lifted verbatim from a 90s thriller.
At some point, Taylor and Loughery needed to chose a path: logical, layered tension or unhinged, over-the-top fun.
It’s clearly evident which one Quaid wanted, but both he and the film end up undecided on the remodeling plans. Like that old, musty spare room with the bad wallpaper, The Intruder is a little creepy, too often unintentionally funny and in need of some work.
Power Couple
Long Shot
by George Wolf
Long Shot‘s first success comes before the opening credits even start rolling. It’s right there on the movie poster: “Unlikely, but not impossible.”
So before you can scoff at the idea of Charlize Theron giving Seth Rogen the time ‘o day, your protest of the premise is a) acknowledged, and b) set aside, leaving plenty of loophole to just appreciate an R-rated romantic comedy that’s brash, smart, timely, and pretty damn funny.
Rogen is Fred Flarsky, a scruffy, sweatsuit-loving online journalist known for cutting-edge exposes such as “F*&^ You, Exxon,” and “The Two Party System Can Suck a D&^%.” When media monarch Rupert Murdoch, er, I mean Parker Wembley (Andy Serkis) buys the digital magazine Fred works for, he quits in protest.
Theron plays Secretary of State Charlotte Field, a graceful, brilliant stateswoman who’s ready to make a run for the Oval Office and could use a speechwriter. Back in her teens, Charlotte was Fred’s babysitter (!), and after they cross paths at an ill-fated fundraiser, he’s brought on to give Charlotte’s speeches a little of that Fred Flarsky feeling.
The surprising (but not impossible!) romance that follows doesn’t thrill Team Charlotte (the slideshow explaining how it might impact her poll numbers is a scream) but credit writers Dan Sterling (The Interview) and Liz Hannah (The Post) for having more on their minds than a dude makeover.
Keeping just enough of that Rogen stoner-comedy vibe, Long Shot skewers Bernie Bros, female candidate double standards, romantic comedy tropes, celebrity presidents and, most pointedly and hilariously of all, Fox News.
Theron and Rogen elevate every bit of it, working as a comedic power couple out in front of an ensemble cast full of standouts, most notably June Diane Raphael as Charlotte’s disapproving Chief of Staff and O’Shea Jackson, Jr. as Fred’s motivational best friend.
Director Jonathan Levine (The Wackness, 50/50, The Night Before) keeps things grounded and character-focused. Just when the parody or implauseability is in danger of running amok, he gets us back in the semi-real world of crowd pleasing entertainment.
And though that does mean a third act that gives in to overt sentimentality, Long Shot has the heart, charm and hilarity to win you over long before then.
Run Through It
The River and the Wall
by Rachel Willis
Director Ben Masters has an interest in the land along the Rio Grande. In making The River and the Wall, he hopes to show us what makes the area so special.
Along with four companions – two wildlife filmmakers, an ecologist/ornithologist, and a Rio Grande river guide – Masters embarks on a weeks-long, 1200-mile trip from El Paso, Texas to the Gulf of Mexico. They travel along the Rio Grande, the potential site of a border wall that, if erected, would have a lasting, devastating impact on the land.
Most of the film screens like an adventure tale. The companions travel by mountain bike and mustang in places where the river is too shallow for boats. When the river is passable, they journey by canoe. By making the trip in this way, they hope to show the difficulty of the journey in numerous places. It’s an imperfect attempt to emphasize the unlikelihood that immigrants would choose these routes when attempting to cross into the United States.
Along the way, we meet people on both sides of the border. If there are people who live in these areas who are in favor of the wall, Masters and team don’t meet any. From people living in Mexico to ranchers in Texas, everyone recognizes the potential negative consequences to the proposed wall. Even the area U.S. representatives in Congress, Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, and Will Hurd, a Republican, are opposed to the wall. Hurd states that building a wall “is the most expensive, least effective” method for border security. It’s a rare show of bipartisanship that should give those opposed to the wall some hope.
The cinematography is essential in a film that wants to impart upon the audience the beauty, vastness, and treachery of the land, and the crew is up to the challenge. Numerous shots highlight the diversity of the landscape as the five friends make their way along the river.
In some ways, The River and the Wall effectively states its case that the area around the Rio Grande should be protected. Ecologist Heather Mackey mentions over 150 bird species live in the area, some of which are only located in this area. A wall would disrupt migration patterns, bulldoze protected natural areas, and in effect, cede nearly 1 million acres of U.S. land to Mexico.
However, it is unlikely the film will change the minds of those in favor of the wall. Most likely because they won’t even bother to see it.
I Don’t Want to Go Out–Week of April 29
What’s worth watching this week? Most everything, really, even though one is more of a train wreck kind of thing.
Click the film title for the full review.
Arctic
Dragged Across Concrete (DVD)
The Hole in the Ground (DVD)
I Trapped the Devil
Serenity
I’ll Be You
JT LeRoy
by Hope Madden
Do you remember the JT LeRoy hubbub? Maybe you confuse it with the similar hullaballoo surrounding James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, the memoir that turned out to be highly fictional?
Please don’t. LeRoy’s bizarre fake nonfiction and ensuing scandal is so much more interesting.
Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy is a hoax perpetrated on an almost grotesquely willing public. Laura Albert, a frustrated writer, master manipulator and likely sufferer of mental health issues, invented LeRoy.
More than the nom de plume used to pen Sarah and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, LeRoy became Albert’s literary persona. Albert herself didn’t exist in this world. She became LeRoy, the writer of lurid “autobiographical” pieces that, together with a mysterious nature, won the hearts of readers, media and celebrities alike.
In fact, Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy became so popular that he had no choice but to show his nonexistent face.
Enter Albert’s sister-in-law, Savannah Knoop.
The weird true-life tale of LeRoy’s fake-life tale has been documented twice in works of nonfiction (the documentaries The Cult of JT LeRoy and Author: The JT LeRoy Story, both worth viewing). Director Justin Kelly is the first to make fiction of the fiction with his aptly cast film, J.T. LeRoy.
Though the film doesn’t offer a great deal of insight beyond what you can glean from the two documentaries, it takes Knoop’s point of view for a refreshing change of pace. But its real strength is the film’s cast.
Kristen Stewart makes the ideal choice to play Savanna/JT. Effortlessly androgynous, moody, sensual and conflicted, Stewart gives the character a vulnerable center, balancing Knoop’s motivation between a sense of duty to Albert and a personal longing for artistic expression.
Naturally, Laura Dern shines, stealing scenes and oscillating between free spirit and opportunist. She does a fine job of illustrating Abbot’s view of creating this other personality who can take on her own pain, can amplify that pain and turn it into both an escape and art. At the same time, Dern’s the schemer, the survivor manipulating those around her. It’s interesting the way the veteran character actor weaves between artist and manipulator in a context that questions the difference between fiction and fraud.
The two leads become a great point/counter point and the film is strongest in their shared scenes. When JT wanders off alone, burdened by puppy love or struggling to keep up a persona of another’s creation, a certain spark goes out.
That’s not to say that the balance of the cast falters. Diane Kruger is particularly slippery as Eva, a thinly veiled version of Asia Argento. But as intriguing as her interplay is with JT, you miss the constant push and pull of wills when Stewart and Dern work off each other.
