COVID has thrown everyone’s life into disarray. In my case, with movie theaters shutting down, along with several other life issues unrelated to the pandemic, my productivity on this blog was slown to a crawl and eventually came to a screeching halt. To get back into the swing of things, I thought I’d get back to an old tradition of mine and knock out a few short reviews of movies I’ve seen during lockdown and release them in a compilation. Most of these went straight to streaming, but I’ll also be including a few stragglers from last year that I didn’t get a chance to see until recently. Here’s what I’ve been watching:
Doctor
Sleep
A few years ago, I wrote an
essay about the trouble
with adaptations, and one movie that I wish I covered more in
depth was The Shining, which despite being one of the most iconic horror
films of all time, is famously loathed by Stephen King to this very day, so
much so that when he wrote the sequel 30 years later, he wrote it as a sequel
to the book specifically. Naturally, the big challenge of adapting Doctor
Sleep is managing to stay loyal to two conflicting source materials, but
director Mike Flanagan managed to pull it off beautifully. Doctor Sleep centers
around a now adult Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor), who’s still haunted by the
events at the Overlook Hotel, struggles with alcoholism and working at a
hospice where he uses his shining to help elderly patients pass on. He
eventually develops a psychic bond with Abra (Kyleigh Curran), a girl who also
has the shining, and tries to save her from the True Knot, a cult of vampires
who feed on the souls of psychic children to maintain their immortality. Like I
said, Mike Flanagan was given the unenviable task of making an adaptation that
Stephen King would approve of, while also staying true to the movie that the
general public is more familiar with. He strikes this balance by reserving
references to the movie for when they make sense, and even then, does so in a
way that doesn’t feel obtrusive. But when they do come up, they’re done with
such loving attention to detail, from casting actors who are near mirror images
to their older counterparts, to recreating sets right down to the smallest
nuance, so that when the film reaches its inevitable final showdown at the
Overlook Hotel, it’s well earned. In between, the movie earns its scares
through sheer dread, grotesque imagery and genuinely horrifying scenarios.
(Pro-tip: If you don’t like seeing children in dangerous situations, you might
want to sit this one out.) Performances are great all around, but special
notice has to go to Rebecca Ferguson as the True Knot’s charismatic leader Rose
the Hat, at turns seductive and detestable, but compulsively watchable whenever
she’s onscreen. At two and a half hours, it’s a rather demanding sit, but at no
point does it feel like it’s dragging. Is it perfect? No. Is it as good as The
Shining? Hell no. But most things aren’t, and as it is, this is a worthy
successor to the legacy of both King and Kubrick.
8/10
Honey
Boy
Whenever a famous person
decides to make their autobiography into a movie, there’s always the worry that
it’ll turn into an elongated pity party. In the case of Honey Boy,
written by former child actor, performance artist and living meme Shia LeBeouf
while in rehab, it reveals a life packed with all the trauma and turbulence
those titles would entail, and tries to make peace with it all. LaBeouf’s
surrogate is Otis Lort (Lucas Hedges), a hotshot actor placed in court ordered rehab
after a drunken altercation with the police. His therapist has diagnosed him
with post-traumatic stress disorder and suggests writing a journal recalling
his past in order to find the source. This leads him to dig up old memories of
his time as a child actor (Noah Jupe) in a family sitcom and reconcile his
relationship with his father and coach (Shia LaBeouf), an alcoholic felon and
ex-rodeo clown. This was clearly a very cathartic project for LaBeouf. His
career trajectory has been one of the strangest in Hollywood, so it comes as no
surprise that him working out his issues on the big screen would be no different.
The decision to play his own father is a pretty bold move, perhaps as an
opportunity to get into his tormentor’s headspace and understand him better.
For anyone who’s had a rocky relationship with a loved one, whether it be through
addiction, abuse, a troubled past or some combination thereof, this movie will
hit a raw nerve, and it’s especially haunting knowing these are based on true
events. The film is very self-aware that it’s more therapy than art, but it
never teeters over into self-pity. It’s light on plot, with the major through-line
being Otis coming to terms with his lot in life and learning to accept it. The
performances are especially raw. Right from the very first shot you could tell
Lucas Hedges got all of Shia’s mannerism down pat, Noah Jupe has a nuanced
understanding of his character that’s a pretty heavy load for most child
actors, and LaBeouf completely disappears into the role of his father, giving a
frighteningly accurate portrayal of a troubled abuser. Watching this feels like
reading someone’s diary: While it may give a better understanding of the author,
it feels like something that was never meant to be looked at. But again, this
isn’t some grandstanding statement and isn’t trying to be. It’s a simple story
of about a father and son, and sometime that’s not so simple.
7/10
Birds
of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
I never had much investment in
the DC Extended Universe, mostly because the first few installments were such a
relentlessly joyless slog, but it wasn’t until they pivoted to a more
lighthearted tone and stopped treating “fun” like a dirty word that they finally
got their act together. While Aquaman and Shazam! were able to
pull this off, I wasn’t entirely sure if Birds of Prey could work out
since it was coming off the heels of Suicide Squad, one of my most hated movies
of the last decade. Thankfully the only recurring character was also the only
good one, and it addressed the more fucked up aspects of her backstory head-on.
Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) has finally broken up with The Joker, but the
immunity that comes with being the Clown Prince of Crime’s best gal is now
gone, so now everyone she’s ever wronged in the past is out for their pound of
flesh, namely the narcissistic crime boss Black Mask (Ewan McGregor), who plans
on taking her ex’s spot as the top dog of Gotham’s underground. This leads
Harley to team up with a rogue cop (Rosie Perez), a superpowered singer (Jurnee
Smollett) and a crossbow wielding assassin (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to protect
a young pickpocket (Ella Jay Basco) who stole the key to Black Mask’s success.
The main thrust is that all of these heroines are all loners due to unjust
systems or abusive relationships who are forced to depend on each other to
fight against Black Mask, who’s the embodiment of all the systems that forced
them into being this way. The whole cast pulls their weight, adding nuance to
some otherwise straightforward characters, whether it be Perez as Captain
Montoya being the most grounded member of the crew but constantly being dressed
down for speaking almost entirely in 80’s cop show clichés, or Winstead as the
Huntress being this one woman army with a tragic backstory who spent so much of
her life on revenge and honing the skills needed to exact it that she comes off
as socially inept. But make no mistake, this is Margot Robbie’s movie, and
although she’s supported by a revolving door of straight women, it’s her manic
energy that’s the driving force of the whole endeavor, while exploring every
aspect of this character so as not to just turn the movie into Deadpool but
with a riot grrrl glitter bomb aesthetic. Couple that with some tight action
choreography from the stunt coordinator behind John Wick’s ballet of
carnage and director Cathy Yan’s admirable ability to straighten out a plethora
of tangled plot threads, and you got something suited for both a girl’s night
out or a brodown throwdown.
7/10
Weathering
with You
Makoto Shinkai made huge waves with his 2016 film Your Name., which broke box office records by becoming the highest grossing anime film of all time, the fourth highest grossing movie in Japan, and an international sensation, making it to #1 on my best of 2017 list. (It didn’t get a wide release in America until 2017.) Naturally, whatever he came up with next would be waited upon with baited breath, and predictably, Weathering With You became another box office smash in his home country (at one point Shinkai begged his audience to go see other movies because he felt like he was stealing revenue from them), and washed up on international shores this January. Having seen Your Name., Weathering with You, and caught up with some of his earlier work, I think I have an idea of what Shinkai’s style is: Unabashed teenage romance centered around bizarre sci-fi premises accented by highly detailed animation of weather. Essentially, he’s Richard Curtis with Akira Kurosawa’s weather fetish. In this case, Weathering with You centers around a teenage runaway named Hadoka who just moved to Tokyo, which is going through an unusually long stretch of heavy downpour. He eventually gets a job with a shady tabloid that chases stories of the occult, which leads him to Hina, a weather maiden with the magical ability to make the rain stop. The two become fast friends and start a small business bringing sunshine to the people of Tokyo, but Hadoka soon learns the sad fate of all weather maidens, and does everything he can to prolong her inevitable end. Inevitably, this will draw comparisons to its predecessor, and in that regard, Weathering with You does fall a bit flat. There were plot points that felt like they were lifted wholesale from Your Name. but switched out with different supernatural elements. But it’s unfair to expect Shinkai to make lightning strike twice, plus everything that worked in Your Name works just as well here. The animation is gorgeous, colorful, fluid and richly detailed, especially when it comes to water and light effects, the soundtrack, once again provided by the J-rock group Radwimps, helps accentuate its beauty, and while the romance is a bit schmaltzy and melodramatic for my taste, Shinkai really knows how to write a scene of two lovers tearing through distance and obstacles to reach each other. My only real major gripe with this movie is its ending, which only works if you think about it in terms of the main characters’ growth and not the catastrophic ramifications it has on literally everything else. Especially with climate change threatening to fuck shit up more than it already is, it really didn’t sit well with me. But if you’re willing to look past that and are looking for your next anime romance fix, then this’ll do nicely.
8/10
Guns
Akimbo
If there’s one movie where you can tell if it’s your thing or not just by the trailer, it’s Guns Akimbo. A high-octane concoction of Michael Bay explosiveness and a Neveldine and Taylor sense of off-the-wall violence, Guns Akimbo is gory, fast-paced, and dumb as a bag or hammers. Some people will love it, some will hate it, very likely for the exact same reasons, and I’m pretty sure the director wouldn’t have it any other way. Daniel Radcliffe plays Miles, a hapless gamer and internet troll who pisses off the creator of Skizm, a massively popular blood sport where criminals and psychos are forced to fight to the death for the entertainment of millions of viewers. The next day, he’s unwillingly enlisted as the show’s next contestant, waking up with two guns bolted to his hands and forced to face off against the reigning champion (Samara Weaving), who has her own vendetta against the showrunners. Right out the gate, the movie slams its foot on the gas and never lets up, and while there’s the initial thrill of going at high speed, there’s also the lingering fear that one wrong turn could send someone flying through the windshield. In this case, the main catch is watching Miles in this compromising situation, trying desperately to not look suspicious while running around town in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers and struggling to do everyday things with guns attached to his hands, all while being hunted down by a scary, heavily armed woman with no eyebrows. The rest of the movie is an ever-escalating, lightning-fast shoot-em-up akin to Crank or Hardcore Henry, and if that’s your flavor of action, then drink up. Unfortunately, its attempts at social commentary tend to fall flat or even come across as hypocritical. There are moments where the movie will try to condemn people for consuming violent entertainment and tell them to get off their damn phones immediately after someone gets their head blown off, and at times it feels like an episode of Black Mirror that was rejected for being too preachy. But if you can get past that, there’s lots of fun to be had. Sometimes, dumb, violent and crazy is the order of the day.
6/10
Artemis
Fowl
NOPE!
NOPE/10
Da 5
Bloods
Spike Lee makes every movie
like it’s going to be his last, so he has to get every crazy idea he has at the
moment onto celluloid as
soon as he can. Sometimes this results in gold like Do the Right Thing,
Malcolm X or 25th Hour, other times it results in utter
trash like She Hate Me, Girl 6 or the remake of Oldboy.
Regardless of quality, you’re never going to mistake a Spike Lee joint for
anyone else. I wasn’t entirely sure which end of the spectrum Da 5 Bloods
was going to land on, especially since it was stepping out of the shadow of BlacKkKlansman,
but what I wasn’t expecting was for it to be his best movie in nearly
twenty years. Following four black veterans (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis and Isaiah Whitlock Jr.) returning to Vietnam to pay
respects to their fallen leader (Chadwick Boseman) and find a hidden cache of gold they found
during the war and swore to come back and dig up, Lee uses this basic setup to
cram in as much commentary as he can about 60’s politics, the erasure of black
soldiers from history, the fakeness of other Nam movies, and much like BlacKkKlansman,
drawing from the past to make a statement about the present .
Although the movie is slathered in Lee’s signature flair, he’s not afraid to
wear his influences on his sleeve, the most obvious in this case being Apocalypse
Now and Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and if you’ve seen both of
those films, then you can pretty much guess how this movie goes down. It starts
off pretty conventionally, but the lingering effects the war had on these men
starts to creep in like a fungus, and the closer they get to the treasure, the
more it takes its toll. The movie’s most notable stylistic gimmick is when we
see flashbacks during the Bloods’ time in the war shifts to a
pitch perfect recreation of a cheap 80’s Cannon style Rambo knock-off, with
grimier cinematography, faster editing and a tighter aspect ratio. Performances
are great all-around, but the special praise has to go to Delroy Lindo for
giving the greatest and most potent portrayal of the damage war can do to a
man. He starts off as one of the movie’s biggest heroes but becomes more and
more unhinged as being in Vietnam takes its toll on his PTSD until an explosive
confrontation turns him into the main villain by the halfway point. Despite the
climax being built upon great sorrow, Lee manages to pull an optimistic ending
out of the ashes, and at two hours and thirty-five minutes, it doesn’t waste a
single second. One of the best things on Netflix right now, and like I said,
one of the best of Spike Lee’s entire career.
9/10
The
Old Guard
Freddie Mercury once famously
asked “Who wants to live forever?” And that’s a pretty legit question, because
once you get down to it, immortality sounds abysmal. Sure, nothing can kill you,
but everyone you know and care about will eventually grow old and die before
your eyes, you have to watch humanity keep making the same mistakes over and
over again, you can never stay in one place for long out of fear of being
figured out, if you get fatally shot or stabbed you have to feel the pain of
it, and eventually you’ll get sick of all and just want it to end but have no
feasible way of offing yourself. The Old Guard is one of the few movies
I can think of that acknowledges how much of a raw deal immortality is, but
also uses this immunity to have its team of badass heroes take a warehouse full
of bullets without having to prematurely roll the credits. The badasses in
question are a team of immortal mercenaries (Charlize Theron, Matthias
Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli) who’ve been secretly protecting
humanity for centuries. They find themselves on the run when they discover that
their handler (Chiwetel Ejiofer) has sold them out to a sadistic
pharmaceuticals CEO (Harry Melling) who wants to keep them as unkillable lab
rats to create medicine for terminal diseases, while also dealing with their
newest recruit (Kiki Layne), the first of their kind in over 200 years. While
making the protagonists immortal somewhat robs the action of its stakes (Mostly.
Eventually their wounds stop healing and Charlize Theron has been impatiently
waiting for hers to follow suit.), The Old Guard makes up for it by
telling a more nuanced and emotionally enriched story than what you’d expect
from a guns-a-blazing action flick. Between the shoot-outs and hand to hand
combat, we’re given more relaxed moments that show us how tightly knit the
relationships of these soldiers are, how they grapple with their inability to
die, and a terrifying glimpse of what could happen if the world found out what
they really are. Beyond that, the structure is pretty conventional. Kiki
Layne’s character is the obvious audience avatar since having her be the new
recruit gives the script a good excuse to have everyone’s backstory explained
and bring everyone up to speed, two characters are kidnapped and the final
showdown is the remaining three raiding a heavily secured high-rise, certain
plot details pertaining to the characters’ past leave ample room for a sequel
(which, based on this movie’s rating, will most definitely happen), and no
points for guessing that there’s a philosophical clash of idealism vs. cynicism
between the leader and the newbie with idealism eventually winning over. While
the plot isn’t exactly a game changer in the broader sense and it frequently
drops snippets that sound more interesting than what they’re focusing on, it’s
the character focused moments that keep your engagement and the action is more
than satisfactory. Plus, it has Charlize Theron kicking ass while rocking the
hot mom at the gym look, and when is that ever not an improvement?
7/10
Hamilton
Finally, the Broadway sensation that defined the latter half of the 2010’s is readily available to the masses and has given people a reason to get a Disney+ subscription beyond re-watching all the old stuff everyone already has on DVD. Honestly, Hamilton is one of those pieces of pop culture ephemera that’s been so thoroughly praised and picked over that reviewing it in 2020 feels redundant. But like I said, this is the first time it’s been readily available to the general public beyond the soundtrack or bootleg performances on YouTube, which speaks more to how unfair it is that such an important piece of art was inaccessible to the masses for so long than to the art itself. But having finally seen it, I do get where all the hype is coming from. On paper, the idea of a hip-hop musical about one of the founding fathers sounds like something your high school history teacher who tries way too hard to be hip with the kids would do, but Lin-Manuel Miranda manages to pull it off and make it an integral part of the apparatus that makes it work. It’s fun, it’s innovative, most of the performances are great (Sorry, Lin, being a triple threat doesn’t mean you’re a master of all three.), the music is great (My favorite songs are “You’ll Be Back”, “Satisfied”, “Wait for It”, “Dear Theodosia”, “The Room Where It Happened” and “The Election of 1800”.), and yes, seeing a musical cast almost entirely by people of color gain this much success is a pretty big deal. This has all been said a million times before and better by people way more qualified to speak about this kind of thing than I am. With all that said, Hamilton coming to Disney+ has sparked a big discussion about some of its undercurrents and how it reflects the current political climate, which I definitely have some thoughts on.
Since this is all happening in
the midst of mass protests and riots over the systemic racism that’s permeated my
country since its very inception, a discussion has risen asking if it’s okay to
heap so much praise onto a play that bowdlerizes the story of the man who
created the justice system that allowed these things to happen. Some of the
harshest critics have called the play hypocritical for portraying Alexander Hamilton
as a hero who opposed slavery while omitting the fact that he owned slaves and
married into a family with high investment in the slave trade. Sure, most
historical dramas take creative liberties with the facts and glance over the
uncomfortable parts, and Hamilton is no exception. Hell, Lin-Manuel
Miranda has openly admitted that he made a lot of changes to make it more
entertaining. Yes, Alexander Hamilton was an immigrant who came from nothing,
but he rose to the top by marrying into a rich family. He fought for freedom,
but he also owned slaves. He was ambitious, egotistical, obsessive, didn’t know
when to stop or say no, and those traits led to both his rise and fall. He was
a complicated man with a lot of different facets that can’t all be succinctly
covered in a two-and-a-half-hour play. Hamilton isn’t a Ken Burns
documentary and never pretends to be. Through the harshest and most cynical
lens, it might be seen as American propaganda disguised as performative
wokeness that uses race to absolve itself of any scrutiny or accountability.
But the general consensus is that it invited a lot of people to reconsider
their history, largely because of how the casting and music reframes it. Some
people find it inspiring, in the same way they might find Fearless Girl or Black
Panther is inspiring. Is it bad that people are taking inspiration from
something this sanitized? It’s not my place to say. But if they’re taking
something good from it, then who really cares? I mean, at least he wasn’t
Thomas Jefferson.
9/10
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