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Outtakes

The Speed of Joy

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Marty, Life Is Short

by George Wolf

Remember when someone on social media tried to come at Martin Short, and it seemed like the entire internet rose up in protest?

That was awesome, because even if you don’t think Short is funny for some odd reason, he just seems like a peach of a human being.

The Netflix doc Marty, Life Is Short confirms that peachiness, for just about every one of its 99 minutes. Full of home movies, TV and movie clips, interviews with family, famous friends, and a few new thoughts from Short himself, the film reveals him as a kind soul committed to fighting pain by spreading laughter.

And while Short insists that, as opposed to the well worn comic stereotype, his humor was not born from pain, he has endured plenty of it.

“It came from my whole life,” he says.

Short lost his brother at age 12, his mother at 18, his father at 20, his beloved wife of thirty years, Nancy Dolman, in 2010, and his daughter Katherine just three months ago. And still, as Steve Martin tell us, if Marty says he’ll be at your dinner party and then he can’t come, “you cancel the party.”

Martin is just one of the many longtime friends and colleagues that director Lawrence Kasdan assembles to sing Short’s praises. From Speilberg to Hanks, from former SCTV co-stars Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, and the late Catherine O’Hara to Short’s own siblings and beyond, all of the love feels warm and one hundred percent authentic. It’s often touching.

Clearly, Kasdan is also a longtime friend, which brings both pluses and minuses. He’s an Oscar-nominated director with no shortage of inside access to his subject, yes, but his closeness to Short also fuels the feeling that all the film’s edges have been safely dulled. Kasdan also asks some onscreen questions without being mic-ed up, which can be frustrating to follow.

Recent docs such as Steve! (Martin) and Pee-wee as Himself have shown how these types of biographies can transcend the standard playbook for a deeper, more resonant type of engagement. Marty, Life Is Short keeps the ranks more closed, leaning into a greatest hits presentation, a box set with extended liner notes.

It’s an entertaining, funny, and star-studded salute to a guy who’s pretty easy to like and who, in the words of Tom Hanks, “moves at the speed of joy.”

And, man wait ’til you see the footage of his A-list Christmas parties from back in the day. Epic!

Outtakes

Octopus’s Garden

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Remarkably Bright Creatures

by Hope Madden

It’s never not a joy to see Sally Field’s irrepressible smile onscreen
(2023’s 80 for Brady notwithstanding). The two-time Oscar winner is effortlessly likeable (as she clarified in one of those two acceptance speeches), and the older she gets, the easier she is to root for.

This week, the 80-year-old delightfully curmudgeons her way through Netflix’s smalltown dramedy Remarkably Bright Creatures. Field is Tova, who lives alone in a big, gorgeous old home in the Pacific Northwest and works nights cleaning the town’s aquarium. She doesn’t exactly need the work. But she likes her work buddies.

These include Marcellus, an aging octopus voiced by Alfred Molina. This is where director Olivia Newman’s take on Shelby Van Pelt’s novel can’t help but be a little syrupy. Marcellus narrates much of the film, explaining what he—with his superior intellect—sees in the one human he doesn’t disdain, the cleaning lady.

And then, “the juvenile” (Lewis Pullman) starts cleaning, and Marcellus doesn’t care for that one.

Newman (Where the Crawdads Sing), who co-writes the adaptation with John Whittington (Swapped), isn’t out to change cinema. Just charm you. The beautiful coastal backdrop, gaggle of well-meaning if quaintly unrealistic townies, and admirable performances ensure she does just that.

The film folds in enough side and sub-plots to keep it from ever being entirely predictable, but Newman’s direction is assured enough that it’s not overstuffed, either. Most of the minor characters feel underdrawn, certainly, but it’s the main trio—Tova, the Juvenile, Marcellus—who interest you, anyway.

Remarkably Bright Creatures understands the peace of an aquarium. I’m not sure it convinces that life outside the aquarium is that hectic. But Sally Field reminds you that sometimes people choose loneliness, and sometimes that choice suits them until it doesn’t.

Remarkably Bright Creatures is no masterpiece, but it’s a really good-looking film brimming with heart and elevated by the time and care of one of the industry’s all-time greatest.

Outtakes

Furry Feathered Friday

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Swapped

by Hope Madden

Director Nathan Greno pulls from a lot of influences for his new feature, the Netflix exclusive Swapped. The vibrant colors and poetically gorgeous woodland creatures conjure Miyazaki, particularly the more serene scenes from Princess Mononoke. And the bit where the little chipmunk looking thing and the big plumy bird switch bodies, that is obviously the Disney classic Freaky Friday. 

Swapped is a visual feast, especially the earliest sequences when a young Pookoo (chipmunk like thing) named Ollie (voiced in youth by Camden Brooks and in adulthood by Oscar winner Michael B. Jordan) explores the waters around Pookoo Island. But Ollie’s mom and dad (Justina Machado, Cedric The Entertainer) warn him that everything off island is dangerous. Everything!

Ollie doesn’t believe them, so things, of course, go terribly wrong. Mean birds steal the seeds that keep the Pookoo alive, and Ollie has to make things right. But instead, he Freaky Fridays with one of those birds (Juno Temple), and suddenly everybody’s in a terrible state.

Swapped takes that time honored tale to share a meaningful fable on the power of empathy. Temple and Jordan both provide strong voice talent—Temple is especially on point.

Tracy Morgan is ideal as Boogle, an enormous, simple-minded fish. Honestly, Swapped offers Morgan more of an opportunity to stretch than any role he’s had in recent memory, and he nails it.

And while the story leans into familiar territory, its tale is important. Greno and his team of writers don’t complicate it beyond what youngsters will gladly follow, nor do they water down their message. The result is emotional, funny, sometimes even harrowing. And really gorgeous.

Swapped doesn’t do enough to set itself apart from other animated wonders, but what it does it does really well. It’s a powerful story beautifully animated and well told.

Outtakes

Pushed to the Limit

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Apex

by Hope Madden

What is it about Charlize Theron that you totally buy her badassedness? Maybe it’s her natural athleticism. She was a ballerina, leaving her with grace and fitness that suggest power. She hangs by fingertips from a rock face, and you think, yep, that’s Charlize Theron. Not, that’s a really skilled stunt performer.

That’s probably because it is Charlize Theron. According to her interview with Outside Magazine, Theron learned to rock climb for the new Netflix thriller Apex, so nearly all of that dizzying  and astonishing  footage is, indeed, the actor herself.

Baltasar Kormákur’s outback survival film pits Theron’s Sasha, an extreme adventure enthusiast, against Ben (Taron Egerton), an extreme psychopath.

Sasha, still stinging from the death of her partner (Eric Bana), is looking to do some solo Outback water adventuring. Ben seems like a helpful Boy Scout type, and when Sasha finds her gear missing, she hikes up to Ben’s shelter to ask for assistance. Ben is less than helpful.

Like Theron, Egerton also does his own stunt work. The reality this offers the film, framed to emphasize its death-defying glory by cinematographer Lawrence Sher (Joker, The Bride), elevates Apex above its spare Aussie horror script.

Jeremy Robbins’s screenplay takes a mid-story genre turn that doesn’t entirely work. Egerton more than convinces as the sweet-faced psycho, but the plot turn asks a little more than he can deliver. Theron’s sharp acting instincts—and a well-timed bite—almost salvage the scene.

But Apex rights itself pretty quickly. As long as we’re watching Theron tearing through forests, up rock faces, and down rapids with Egerton in jolly pursuit, all is well. And honestly, that’s about half the film.

Kormákur’s passion has always been the survival thriller: The Deep, Everest, Adrift, Beast. In every case, it’s the writing, not the directing, that’s been the drawback. Apex suffers less from writing woes. Robbins gives Theron a character to dig into, and Egerton’s dialog is deeply unnerving, particularly as it’s delivered with such a cherubic grin.

But it’s definitely the way Kormákur frames the action, and the way his actors push themselves physically, that make Apex such a fun watch. 

Outtakes

Blue Christmas

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Goodbye June

by Hope Madden

Oscar winner and perennial contender Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with the Christmastime family drama, Goodbye June. What drew the esteemed thespian behind the camera? A script by her son, Joe Anders.

The film tells the tale of June (Helen Mirren), whose cancer has returned just two weeks before Christmas. Her doting, anxiety riddled son, Connor (Johnny Flynn), and her husband (Timothy Spall) get her to the hospital and wait for the rest of the family to come in and, well, take over.

These are the sisters: Julia (Winslet), Molly (Andrea Riseborough), and Helen (Toni Collette).

Pause to marvel at this cast.

It would be hard to go wrong with any one of those humans, and indeed, Winslet’s ensemble—Riseborough and Spall, in particular—craft lived-in characters, each one’s behavior naturally amplified because of the situation. June is dying.

Winslet captures the chaos, simultaneously merry and discordant, in a big family brimming with little kids all cramped in a hospital room or running wild through its halls. The child actors are quite good, not to mention awfully cute.

Anders’s script doesn’t overexplain, mercifully. The details aren’t terribly necessary if you’ve ever been in or near a family. Molly kind of hates Julia. This hurts Julia, who is also mortified by Molly’s controlling, even bullying behavior with hospital staff. Everyone thinks Helen’s a flake. Likewise, everyone is fed up with Dad and filled with a mixture of tenderness and disappointment in Connor.

Credit Anders, as well, for avoiding the cliché of the sainted, dying mother in the hospital bed. A charmingly mischievous Mirren is unapologetic but loving, still getting in digs here and there that have no doubt worn down her children over the decades. Helen shouldn’t wear yellow. Julia needs to look after everyone, but not in that overbearing way she sometimes has.

The fine-tuned performances are nearly undone by the superficial plot, unfortunately.  Goodbye June is saddled with obviousness bordering on the maudlin that Winslet and her inarguably talented cast can’t quite transcend. Winslet’s crafted a holiday tearjerker with a fine but conspicuous message.

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Bully Pulpit

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Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

by George Wolf

We may be early in awards season, but the slam dunk winner for Best Use of a Church Organ in an Ensemble Whodunnit has arrived.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery brings that LOL moment and many other deadly delights, as writer/director Rian Johnson again shows a wonderful grasp on giving the Agatha Christie blueprint his own wickedly fun stamp.

There’s been a murder at a small Catholic church in upstate New York. Just as young priest Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) is learning his way around Monsignor Jefferson Wick’s (Josh Brolin) iron-fisted control of his flock at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, Wicks turns up with a literal knife in his back.

Jud has some violence in his checkered past – and he found the body – but the pews are filled with suspects. There’s lawyer Vera (Kerry Washington), her adopted son Cy (Daryl McCormack), writer Lee (Andrew Scott), Dr. Nat (Jeremy Renner), newcomer Simone (Cailee Spaeny), groundskeeper Samson (Thomas Haden Church) or maybe even devoted church secretary Martha (Glenn Close).

That much sleuthing is a bit overwhelming for Chief Scott (Mila Kunis) and her officers, so WGD (World’s Great Detective) Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is on the case, albeit reluctantly.

In fact, Blanc is loath to even set foot inside a church, a feeling detailed in his breathtaking introductory speech, the opening salvo in Johnson’s assault on demagoguery and the quest for power via radicalization.

That assault is far from subtle, but man it’s a treat to get caught up in.

Brolin continues his stellar year with a masterclass of egotistic bullying, and O’Connor is the perfect counterpoint. Fresh-faced and mop-haired, Father Jud is committed to being a force for good in the world, and to honoring Christ’s mission to heal the world. That mission seems lost amid Wick and his parishioners, and each member of this sublime ensemble understands Johnson’s assignment to skewer such commonplace self-righteous hypocrisy.

Craig is letter-perfect once again, dialing back the giddy flamboyance that drove 2022’s Glass Onion with darker shades in line with the film’s tone. Blanc is troubled and stumped about more than just the facts of the case, and Craig continues to craft him as an endlessly fascinating figure.

Wake Up Dead Man is less of an outright comedy than the last mystery, though some solid laughs do land (like the church organ gag). And just like last time, it will not be hard to guess who Johnson has his knives out for. What you won’t guess is who done it, or how they done it.

But it sure is a kick to try.

Outtakes

Exit Light, Enter Night

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In Your Dreams

by Hope Madden

The delightfully juvenile humor that propels much of the new Dreamworks animated film In Your Dreams entertains. It also amplifies the tension between tween big sister Stevie (Jolie Hoant-Rappaport) and little brother, Elliot (Elias Janssen).

If the perfectionist eldest sibling is going to somehow get her parents to stay together, the last thing she needs is Elliot and his foul-smelling stuffed animal Baloney Tony (Craig Robinson) getting in the way.

But naturally, when Stevie makes a wish to find Sandman and make her dream of a happy family come true, somehow Elliot gets himself involved. Now Stevie can’t make her way through dreamland to find the Sandman without her pesky little brother.

In that way, In Your Dreams is sort of the Predator: Badlands of the grade school set.

Though the computer-generated animation is sometimes disappointing, the movie’s chaotic energy and humor while our heroes work toward finding the Sandman—plus a fun, splashy bit of hand drawn animation— are a blast. It’s during these dream montages that co-writers/directors Erik Benson and Alexander Woo (who write with Stanely Moore) are most inspired. It’s also where we get to spend the most time with Baloney Tony, easily the film’s funniest character.

As dreams of life among happily animated breakfast foods turn rancid under the influence of Nightmara (Gia Carides), In Your Dreams runs through a fun, funny, and often insightful set of dream sequences set to appropriate and fun needle drops.

The film’s themes are compelling and often insightfully rendered, and the storyline itself bears originality sometimes lost in family films. But once we finally reach the Sandman, the look, feel, humor and imagination seem to disappear. We build and build to Sandman, but he and his castle are bland and forgettable.

In Your Dreams never fully recovers, most of Act 3 feeling like a quick and easy escape route from the otherwise clever conceits in the plot. There are definitely laughs and fun sequences, but you may forget this one as quickly as last night’s dream.

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You Bet Your Life

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Ballad of a Small Player

by George Wolf

Many fans of Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 book Ballad of a Small Player won’t be surprised to learn how long the film adaptation was stuck in development. The tale presents a tricky narrative tone, mixing metaphor, dark comedy and psychological mind games for a ride of desperate obsession.

Director Edward Berger and star Colin Farrell are all in for the Netflix version, but they leave the final table a little short of the jackpot.

Farrell is Lord Doyle, on the run in the Chinese region of Macau. Doyle needs to settle a $350,000 casino tab in three days or he’ll be arrested. But there are plenty of other glitzy casinos to visit, and Doyle works whatever angle he can to get credit at the baccarat tables, always promising that big score that never comes.

He seems to meet a kindred spirit in Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a casino manager who takes pity on Doyle’s lonesome loser nature. It is the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts in Macau, and Dao Ming may have some surprising burnt offerings in mind.

While the two begin to form a fragile bond, private investigator Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton) is on Doyle’s tail, and may finally force him to confront the secret life he has been hiding.

Farrell brings sympathy to Doyle’s downward spiral in writer Rowan Joffe’s adaptation, making it easier to accept a third act that surprises no one. Swinton carves her usual glory out of limited screen time, and Chen gives Dao Ming the mysterious grace of possible salvation. Kudos as well to Deanie Ip as Grandma, an ultra-rich gambler who has no trouble sizing Doyle up in hilarious fashion.

Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front, Conclave) brings his own air of desperation, filling each frame with a forced showiness that wears out its welcome pretty quickly. There’s no doubt many set pieces are bursting with color and beauty, but the attempts to blur the real and surreal are so forced it begins to detract from the pleasure of watching these actors claw closer to that final reveal.

Ballad of a Small Player has no problem reminding you that the source is probably a great read. Watching it unfold – in select theaters, or on Netflix – is just too frustrating to rise above pretty good.

Outtakes

Stab Me With a Spoon

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Fear Street: Prom Queen

by George Wolf

If you’ve been waiting for Netflix to bring their bloody Fear Street fun to the 1980s, Prom Queen is here to gag you with a spoon (or stab you with a hatchet). But after some satisfying time traveling to the 90s, the 70s, and 1666, part four of the series proves the devil is in the details.

Really, one big detail.

After adapting the original trilogy of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books, writer/director Leigh Janiak gets only an executive producer credit here, and her absence stands out like a new zit on the night of the big dance.

It’s 1988 in the cursed town of Shadyside, and outcast Lori Granger (India Fowler) tells us she is running for Prom Queen. Seems the town is still whispering about what Lori’s Mom did to her Dad years ago, and Lori wants to prove her worth. Standing in the way? Only Queen Bee Tiffany (Fina Strazza) and her “Wolfpack.”

That, plus the masked, red poncho-wearing marauder who starts picking off the Prom Queen candidates one by one.

Director and co-writer Matt Palmer provides the requisite kills, but can never capture the fun that has made Fear Street such a blast to visit. To start with, the time stamp is off. Where’s the big hair, the slang and the fashions from the late 80s? The production has also switched music supervisors, leaving us with needle drops that are a few years off the mark.

The homages to classic horror, Heathers and Mean Girls seem to be here more as an expected requirement than an understood assignment. Plus, the killer’s identity is not much of a surprise while solid performers such as Katherine Waterston and Lily Taylor are wasted with shallow, throwaway roles.

Is there an After Prom? Maybe that’s where the fun is.

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Why Yes, That Chicken Looks Familiar

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Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

by Hope Madden

Just over 30 years ago, cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his long-suffering dog Gromit took in a lodger and invented a new kind of pants. Neither were what they seemed.

And just when you thought you’d seen the last of Feathers McGraw—well, several decades after you thought you’d seen the last of him—he resurfaces with a diabolical scheme involving zookeepers, turnips, and gnomes.

Oh, and vengeance. Vengeance most fowl.

Longtime Aardman Entertainment filmmaker Nick Park takes on a couple of partners this go-round in co-writer Mark Burton (Shaun the Sheep) and co-director Merlin Crossingham, who’s been part of the Aardman team for years, directing video games, television, as well as the documentary A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman.

After 2023’s disappointing Aardman sequel Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, the stop-motion plasticine legends could use a reminder of how they nabbed all four of those Oscars. And so, W&G return with Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

What have the lads been up to? Gromit’s been finding peace in his garden. Meanwhile, Wallace has invented a yard gnome that does gardening so Gromit doesn’t have to. Norbot (voiced Reece Shearsmith) is so efficient and hardworking that the whole of Wallaby Street wants his help! What could go wrong?

Loads! Especially once Feathers McGraw catches wind of the new invention, thanks to the crack reporting of one Onya Doorstep (Diane Morgan).

We lost Peter Sallis, longtime voice of Wallace, back in 2017, but Ben Whitehead takes on lead duties with appropriate aplomb.

Otherwise, expect the expected, which turns out to be the film’s strength as well as its weakness. The film mixes silly with clever in exactly the right proportion, as is the charm with the entire franchise. Wallace is so addicted to tech that he’s sure his old ceramic teapot is broken because he keeps pushing its knob and nothing happens. It doesn’t turn on. Nothing!

There are dozens of bright sight gags, loads of Rube Goldberg style tech, and plenty of endearingly dunderheaded characters. The animation itself, full of thumb prints and vivid color, is as brilliant as it has ever been.

There’s just not a lot of surprises. No one expected a giant were-rabbit in the lads’ last film, and it was right in the title of 2005’s magnificent Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Vengeance Most Fowl is a comforting, comfortable adventure, but it breaks no new ground and leaves less of an impression than you might hope.