BIG GEORGE FOREMAN (2023) – Remarkable True Story of Heavyweight Champion is a Winner

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As you know, I’m a sucker for boxing movies. Love ’em because they so often translate into exciting cinema.

And the true story of heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman is a remarkable one, all by its lonesome without any fanfare.

So, BIG GEORGE FOREMAN (2023), the new movie based on the life of boxer George Foreman, could be a really good movie without even trying, but it does try, and the result is a good one. It’s a highly entertaining movie that tells a fascinating story of a man who learned to adapt to everything life threw at him, and at the end of the day, he came out on top as a champion. Not once. But twice.

We first meet George Foreman as a young boy growing up dirt poor in Houston in the early 1960s. His family is so poor he and his brothers and sisters have to share one fast food burger for dinner, but their family is held together by their hard-working and very religious mother Nancy (Sonja Sohn). In school, George with his quick temper and huge size and strength, can’t seem to keep himself out of fights.

As a young adult in the late 1960s, George (Khris Davis) joins Job Corps, a government program which was part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty where George hopes to learn some job skills and be provided meals and get paid. But he can’t stop fighting there either, but fortunately for George, he meets Doc Broadus (Forest Whitaker), a former boxer who now trains fighters, and he teaches George how to box. Doc is highly impressed by the tremendous force in Foreman’s punches. Foreman sets his sights on the heavyweight championship, but Doc tells him of the long process which he must follow first. The first step is the Olympics, and on the international stage, young George Foreman stuns the world and wins the Gold Medal by defeating the heavily favored Soviet boxer.

Next up for George is the heavyweight championship, and standing in his way is Joe Frazier. Again, Foreman stuns the world by knocking out the previously indestructible Frazier in just two rounds. Suddenly, George Foreman is king of the world and is enjoying riches he never imagined. But his success is short-lived, because his next big bout is against Muhammad Ali, who was still on his mission to reclaim the heavyweight belt which was taken from him years earlier because of his refusal to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Ali’s previous attempt to win back the championship ended in a loss to Joe Frazier.

This time, Foreman with his superhuman punches, is the heavy favorite to win against the older Ali, but Ali, a master at psyching out his opponents, which is something that BIG GEORGE FOREMAN doesn’t really get into, but the fight billed as the “Rumble in the Jungle” was held in Zaire, Africa, and Ali pretty much wowed the people there and turned the fans against Foreman, and the crowd that night was very much pro-Ali, which stunned Foreman. And then Ali unleashed a brilliant boxing strategy, leaning against the ropes, letting Foreman throw punch after punch until he became exhausted. Ali knocked Foreman out in the 8th round, and suddenly Foreman was no longer champion.

Shortly thereafter, Foreman collapses and nearly dies, and he has an out of body experience, which, when he comes out of it, influences him to retire from boxing and become a preacher, which he does. He also remarries and starts a new family, but when his fortunes from boxing are all lost due to poor financial planning by the man who Foreman had put in charge of caring for his finances, Foreman finds himself broke again. Now in his 40s, Foreman reunites with Doc and convinces him to train him once again. They once more set their sights on shocking the world, as Foreman now very much overweight trains and gets himself into shape to box again where he builds an impressive undefeated record and once more heads towards a chance to win the heavyweight championship, which, unbelievably, he ultimately does.

I told you it was a remarkable story.

As you probably can tell, I really enjoyed BIG GEORGE FOREMAN. As I said, the best part of this movie is it has an incredible true story to tell, and it’s not just because Foreman won the heavyweight championship two different times, but also because of the whole process Foreman follows throughout his life. He is able to remake himself because he understands the power of being able to adapt.

The screenplay by George Tillman, Jr., who directed, Frank Baldwin, and Dan Gordon is effective because it shows George Foreman as a man who rolls with the punches and who not only makes bold choices but also isn’t afraid to change course when he feels it is right to do so. In short, he is able to adapt. When he first becomes a fighter, he’s told to unleash the beast inside him and simply destroy his opponents, and so he embraced his dark side and became viewed as a merciless fighter. But during the Ali fight, his trainers kept telling him, “Keep punching, don’t let up!” which played precisely into Ali’s strategy which ultimately cost Foreman the fight. Had he adapted in the middle of the fight, he may have won.

Foreman uses this thinking when he decides to leave boxing and become a preacher, finally embracing the religion that his mother had always championed but he had bristled at. In fact, during one scene when he’s heavyweight champion, and he invites his family to a lavish meal, his mother says they should thank God first, and Foreman replies that he bought the food, not God. But now it seems right to him to give up boxing and give his life to God.

For a long time, this feels like the right decision, but when he finds himself broke again, he turns to the only other thing he knows, and the one thing he does which makes him money— being a preacher is not paying the bills— which is boxing. Again, he’s told this is a crazy thing to do, but Foreman adapts yet again. My favorite part of this story is Foreman doesn’t follow one easy path to success. His life was full of twists and turns, and he makes decisions at each and every one of these turns, and he makes the most of each of his decisions. It’s great storytelling. It’s a great story.

Kris Davis is fantastic as George Foreman. Not only does he capture the likeness and personality of the real Foreman, but he’s able to navigate the different sides of Foreman throughout this movie. He’s the menacing young heavyweight champion. Then he’s the jovial smiling preacher. Then he’s the overweight bald older boxer who is suddenly the “good guy” in the ring, and the guy who a whole set of older fans are rooting for because of his age. Davis captures all of these personas brilliantly. Davis was also in JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (2021).

Sonja Sohn is terrific as Foreman’s mother Nancy, and she is a strong presence in his life and keeps pushing him forward during all his trials and tribulations. Yet it’s interesting to note that Foreman didn’t always listen to her. Had he, he never would have boxed, since she was against his fighting. Again, Foreman’s life did not follow a set path. There were nuances and curves, and Foreman had to continually navigate through them. Sometimes he listened to his mother, other times to Doc, other times to himself, and other times to God. And while his mother did not want him to box, she supported his boxing career nonetheless, even when he stopped being a preacher to return to the ring.

And as Doc Broadus, Forest Whitaker gets to deliver one of his more memorable performances in years. Whitaker has been in everything lately, from the STAR WARS movies and shows to the Marvel superhero films, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen him play an impactful role like this one. He’s great. The friendship between Doc and Foreman is one of the best parts of the movie. Doc really seems to enjoy training Foreman and wants that heavyweight championship as much as George does, and when George decides to walk away from boxing, it was a decision that really hurt Doc, who believed Foreman still had a legitimate shot at getting back into the ring and beating Ali in a rematch. So, years later, when they are reunited to try for the championship again, their almost heartwarming moments together really resonate. And as Doc, Whitaker gets one of the best lines in the movie. Just before the flabby Foreman is about to box, he tells Doc he’s afraid to take off his robe in front of all these fans because the last time they saw him, he looked like Superman, to which Doc replies, “Well, now you look like the Michelin Man” and tells him it’s not a beauty contest and to just go out and box.

The boxing scenes are fine. Director George Tillman Jr. does a nice job with them, the two best being the Frazier fight and then the loss to Ali. The film slows down a bit when George retires and becomes a preacher, but even this part of the movie works. Earlier this year, the religious film JESUS REVOLUTION (2023) struggled to really capture the essence of religion. It was all very vanilla and didn’t really speak to anyone who wasn’t already religious. That’s not the case here in BIG GEORGE FOREMAN. You really understand why Foreman becomes a preacher, and you really feel his religious conversion. Also, once he becomes a preacher, his life does not turn to gold, and he lives happily ever after. No. He loses everything, and he has to return to boxing, but he keeps his faith, which like the rest of the movie, shows how Foreman adapted to things life threw at him.

The worst part about BIG GEORGE FOREMAN is its title, and that’s because the official title of this movie is…. wait for it… BIG GEORGE FOREMAN: THE MIRACULOUS STORY OF THE ONCE AND FUTURE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD. Wow. If this movie were to win Best Picture, it would take nearly as long to read the title as the entire awards show! Okay, maybe not that long. But what a mouthful.

Anyway, the rest of BIG GEORGE FOREMAN is terrific and highly recommended.

Then again, as I said at the outset, I’m a sucker for boxing movies.

But I also love movies that have really good stories to tell, and BIG GEORGE FOREMAN tells one helluva story. And it’s true.

I give it three and a half stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

CHEVALIER (2023) – Bio Pic of Black French Composer Shows How Racism Ruined a Life and a Career

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CHEVALIER (2023) is a handsome production that takes place in France just before the French Revolution and is based on the true story of little-known French composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a black man who because of his musical talent was accepted into French high society, but eventually racism derailed any hopes he had of remaining a celebrated composer.

It is not a pleasant story, but it is one that everyone needs to learn about.

CHEVALIER (2023) opens in rousing style with a lively concert scene where we witness young Chevalier (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) take the stage alongside Mozart and pretty much show him up in a violin competition for the ages. The sequence ends with a very frustrated Mozart exclaiming, “Who the f*ck was that?” a laugh-out-loud moment and well-placed F-bomb (the only one) in this PG-13 rated bio pic.

We then briefly learn Chevalier’s backstory, where we see his white father deposit him at a prestigious music school in France, which accepts him because even at a young age he is a brilliant violinist. The action returns to Chevalier’s adulthood, where we witness his friendship with the Queen, Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton). As a champion fencer, violinist, and composer, Chevalier finds himself in the Queen’s favor and their friendship flourishes. Chevalier sets his sights on becoming the next director of the Paris Opera, and he challenges his main competition to a contest: they both will write an opera, and the one whose work is judged the best will become the next director.

For his opera, Chevalier attempts to hire Marie-Josephine (Samara Weaving) for his lead actress and singer, but her husband, the cruel Marquis De Montalembert (Marton Csokas) refuses to allow his wife to appear on stage. However, Marie-Josephine tells Chevalier that she will do it anyway, that her husband will be out of the country for a year, and so he won’t know. Chevalier is overjoyed, and as the two work closely together, they also become attracted to each other and have an affair.

When news reaches Chevalier that his father has died, he learns that as a bastard son, his father has left him nothing, but also his mother Nanon (Ronke Adekoluejo) a slave, has been granted her freedom because of his father’s death, and she comes to live with him. She warns Chevalier not to become too comfortable with his current lifestyle, because as she says these people will never completely accept him. He quickly dismisses his mother’s concerns, but it’s at this time that his entire life unravels.

In spite of winning the competition with the better judged opera, Chevalier is told that he cannot become the next director of the Paris Opera because he is a person with dark skin, and when the Marquis De Montalembert returns, he has it out with Chevalier and warns him never to see his wife again. Things grow even darker just at the French Revolution begins, and life as Chevalier knew it changes forever.

CHEVALIER is beautifully shot by director Stephen Williams, who is mostly known for his TV work, including the TV series WATCHMEN (2019) and WESTWORLD (2016-2018). Here he nicely captures the period of eighteenth century Paris with appropriate sets and costumes. He also provides some nifty camerawork. There’s one neat shot in particular where the camera begins with an exterior shot of the streets below and then retreats through a window inside an upper story apartment.

The screenplay by Stefani Robinson is a good one, as it tells yet another disturbing story about racism, as Chevalier was prevented from becoming the Paris Opera director solely because of the color of his skin. The way he is treated throughout this story is a somber reminder of why stories like Chevalier’s need to continue to be told. We sadly live in a time where it’s become acceptable to push back against stories like these, calling them propaganda or asking they not be taught in schools, actions that only justify their telling all the more. To silence stories about racism is simply more racism.

Kelvin Harrison Jr. is solid in the lead role as Chevalier. He displays charm, youthful optimism and confidence, and eventually rage and disillusionment. This is probably my favorite Harrison performance to date. I first saw Harrison in the well-made horror movie IT COMES AT NIGHT (2017) where he played Joel Edgerton’s son. Harrison also played the lead role in LUCE (2019) and was part of the ensemble cast in THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 (2020). Here in CHEVALIER Harrison delivers his most captivating performance, and he trained long and hard on the violin as well, and so the scenes where he plays the violin look realistic.

I’m a fan of Samara Weaving. I love her over-the-top performances in THE BABYSITTER horror movies. She also wowed in the action horror movie READY OR NOT (2019). She had a small role in BABYLON (2022) and is also currently appearing in SCREAM VI (2023). Here in CHEVALIER, she is so very good as Marie-Josephine. Weaving plays a strong female character who refuses to be ruled by her dominating husband, and so she doesn’t hold back in her relationship with Chevalier. Their doomed relationship is one of the more tragic elements of this ultimately very sad story.

Speaking of her husband, Marton Csokas gives a subtle yet disturbing performance as Marquis De Montalembert. One of his best scenes has him quietly telling Chevalier that he is so lucky to be living in France, as in any other country in the world he’d be beaten down because of the color of his skin, the implication being that Chevalier is inferior and that he’s only allowed to do the things he’s doing because of the good graces of the French government. You just want to smack De Montalembert across the face.

Lucy Boynton makes for a spirited Marie Antoinette, going from Chevalier’s biggest fan early on to his biggest detractor when he bristles as her lack of support for his Paris Opera director bid. We just saw Boynton in the superior Netflix thriller THE PALE BLUE EYE (2022), which starred Christian Bale and Harry Melling.

Ronke Adekoluejo is very good as Chevalier’s mother, and when his life spirals out of control, she is there for him and serves to keep him inspired to push on with his life.

I also enjoyed Sian Clifford quite a bit as Madame De Genlis, who was friends with both Chevalier and Marie-Josephine and who helped Chevalier with his opera bid. Likewise, Minnie Driver excels as La Guimard, the opera singer whose advances Chevalier rejected, and so she worked hard to derail his attempts at becoming the next opera director, as she starred in the rival opera.

Overall, I enjoyed CHEVALIER quite a bit. Its story is a good one, in spite of it being depressing. It also ends on a down note, as before the end credits roll, we read that most of Chevalier’s music was destroyed years later by Napoleon Bonaparte, and so most of his work has been lost.

The film is not perfect. It’s all rather conventional and safe in its storytelling and lacks the necessary edge which this story needs. There were also more things I wanted to learn about the man, which aren’t covered in this movie—-how did he become such an accomplished violinist? What happened to him during the French Revolution? —, and there was more I wanted to know about some of the other characters as well.

But it makes its points, that racism ruined Chevalier’s life and career, that he was denied the position of Paris Opera director based solely on the color of his skin, and that the world has been largely denied his musical brilliance for no other reason except that his skin was dark.

CHEVALIER also features a confident performance by Kelvin Harrison, Jr. in the lead role, a performance that is well worth the price of admission.

I give CHEVALIER three stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

AIR (2023) – Director Ben Affleck Knows How to Tell a Story, Even a Lackluster One like Nike’s Signing Michael Jordan

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If you’re a fan of the 1980s, the opening montage in AIR (2023), with its 80s songs and pop culture clips including movies, celebrities, politicians, athletes, and even TV commercials— Where’s the beef? –— is worth the price of admission alone.

It’s a fun way to get things started in this story of how Nike went from chasing Adidas and Converse in the sneaker market to achieving number one status by developing a basketball shoe line exclusively for Michael Jordan, before he had even played one game in the NBA. It was a gutsy move that no one had done before, but it paid off, as Jordan did indeed become arguably the best basketball player of all time, and because of this deal, his career lifted Nike to new levels.

Everything about AIR is fun and amiable. There is no question that this is one very entertaining movie. But the bigger question is, why should anyone care?

For example, upon leaving the theater, I overheard a conversation between two moviegoers, where one was complaining to the other that he didn’t like the movie because this was a movie about Michael Jordan, and Michael Jordan really isn’t in this movie at all. That’s a legitimate concern. Of course, the answer is that AIR really isn’t about Michael Jordan. It’s about Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike talent scout who came up with the plan to build a shoe line around just the one athlete, Jordan, and who convinced Nike to agree to his controversial plan. So, at the end of the day, AIR is not a story about the greatest basketball player of all time, but a story about a shoe deal that made some folks in the sneaker business an awful lot of money. Not exactly a rags to riches story.

AIR opens with Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) lamenting that the basketball department doesn’t have a big enough budget to compete with Adidas and Converse, but Nike CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) tells him he’s lucky he has any budget at all because the basketball division continues to underperform. He tells Sonny the board wants to dismantle the basketball division entirely. Frustrated that they’re about to sign the usual three lackluster NBA players to contracts, Sonny struggles to come up with a different plan. While watching a video of Michael Jordan’s NCAA championship game winning shot, he sees something he hadn’t seen before, and with a new way of looking at the game’s final seconds, decides that Jordan has what it takes to be a championship caliber player.

Sonny comes up with the idea of using their entire budget on Jordan alone. That will enable them to be competitive with Adidas and Converse. Plus, unlike Adidas and Converse, Nike will be able to say to Jordan that they will be the only company to design an entire shoe line for him and him alone, in effect already telling Jordan that they see him as the future of the NBA, that they’re not placing him alongside Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. They’re placing him above Johnson and Bird. It’s a controversial idea, especially since Jordan was already on record as saying he did not like Nike and was going to sign with Adidas.

But Sonny decided to gamble, and once he convinced Knight to go along with the plan, it became a bet that could make or break the company, and as history showed, it was a bet that paid off.

So, really, what this story is about is a bunch of middle-aged white guys trying to save their jobs by signing a basketball player to an exclusive shoe contract even before he has even played one game in the NBA. Which, honestly, isn’t the most inspirational story going. Sorry.

Now, this is not me knocking AIR or finding fault with it, because truthfully, I enjoyed AIR quite a bit. And why shouldn’t I? It has a lot of things going for it.

It’s directed by Ben Affleck, for starters, whose body of work I really like. I like the way Affleck directs movies. He knows how to tell a story. I’ve enjoyed nearly all his previous directorial efforts, films like ARGO (2012), THE TOWN (2010), GONE BABY GONE (2007), and even LIVE BY NIGHT (2016) which wasn’t as critically acclaimed, I thought was a very good movie. And Affleck is back doing his thing here with AIR. While I don’t find this to be the most inspirational story, it’s nonetheless masterfully told by Affleck.

And the screenplay by Alex Convery is a crowd-pleaser. The dialogue is sharp, snappy, and funny. The movie is filled with many laugh-out loud moments. I saw this in a crowded theater, several weeks after its initial release, which is saying something for its popularity, and there was plenty of laughter in all the right places, and people seemed to genuinely like this one. I certainly did.

Matt Damon is likable as Sonny Vaccaro. He plays Vaccaro as a guy who thinks outside the box and goes the extra mile to get the job done, attributes that make him a likable character. The last time I saw Damon in a major role was in FORD V. FERRARI (2019), in which he played a somewhat similar role to this one, as in FORD V. FERRARI Damon was a race car designer trying to design a car to defeat the much-heralded Ferrari cars which were dominating the racing industry at the time. With its thrilling race car scenes, I enjoyed FORD V. FERRARI slightly more than AIR, but thematically, their stories and Damon’s roles in them are similar.

Jason Bateman plays department head Rob Strasser, Sonny’s immediate boss, and Bateman and Damon enjoy some notable scenes together, one in particular where Rob tells Sonny just what he stands to lose if Sonny’s gambit fails, and pretty much tells Sonny he wishes he hadn’t put the company in this position.

Chris Tucker has a field day as Howard White, the one person of color on the team whose smooth-talking skills usually helps them with their basketball clients. It was fun to see Tucker on the big screen again. It had been a while.

Viola Davis delivers a very understated and rather subdued performance as Deloris Jordan, Michael Jordan’s mother who pretty much made all the business decisions for him. The fact that Sonny impressed her with his honesty about what Nike would do specifically for her son and why, because he believed Michael was going to become bigger than the NBA itself, was a major reason why Michael Jordan even agreed to meet with Nike in the first place.

Chris Messina also impresses as Michael Jordan’s agent David Falk, a cutthroat shark of a man who is all about making lots of money. The fiery conversation between him and Sonny where he lambastes Sonny for visiting the Jordan home, in effect circumventing him in the negotiation process, is a highlight of the movie.

Matthew Maher is terrific in a small role as Peter Moore, the sneaker designer who came up with the design for Jordan’s shoe, and who also came up with the name “Air Jordan.”

And Ben Affleck effortlessly plays Nike CEO Phil Knight, who divides his time between berating Sonny for his poor performance and giving him and all his employees philosophical and self-help advice. Knight also isn’t deaf to Sonny’s entreaties that the company needed to return to its roots, words that remained with Knight and ultimately led to his buying into Sonny’s decision. Affleck is a terrific actor who is starting to become underrated because of his success.

The best scene in the movie is the sequence where the Jordan family arrives at Nike for the big boardroom pitch by Sonny and his team. You can feel the tension in the room when it seems as if they are losing their pitch, as their efforts continually appear to fall flat, which leads to Sonny making an eleventh-hour inspirational speech.

It’s a terrific moment in the movie, but one that reiterates that the story told in AIR is limited. After all, what is at stake here if the deal goes south? A bunch of men don’t make a lot of money, and some might lose their jobs. Michael Jordan signs with Adidas and most likely still goes on to become the best player in NBA history. Not exactly a pivotal moment in history.

So, is this a strike against the movie? Yes! This story didn’t interest me at all. However, the way Ben Affleck told this story, and the way the actors performed in it, made it a damned fine entertaining flick! I liked AIR. I just didn’t think its story was all that important.

The best part of AIR is the work behind the camera by Ben Affleck. He knows how to tell a story. Clint Eastwood once said he made movies that his dad would like. And I got that. Eastwoods’ films were often “guy” films, but more importantly, they were films which told stories that worked. Eastwood as a director has always known how to tell stories. Ben Affleck shares this gift, and like Eastwood, has a real flare for telling stories from behind the camera.

The story AIR has to tell isn’t all that remarkable, but it’s a very good movie, because its director knows how tell it.

I give it three stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

HUNGER (2023) – Mouth-Watering Thriller Will Have You Hungry For More

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Are you hungry?’

For success? Food? Power? What is it you hunger for? And how far do you go to get it?

These are the questions that are asked in HUNGER (2023), a new movie from Thailand which is now available on Netflix.

HUNGER is the story of Aoy (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying) who works incredibly hard as a fry chef for her dad’s restaurant, and when she’s not working, she laments with her friends over how difficult it is to get ahead in life. One day, a young man named Tone (Gunn Svasti Na Ayudhya) notices her at work and hands her a business card, telling her she’s too good to be working there. The card is an invitation for her to interview with the famous Chef Paul (Nopachai Chaiyanam), the most famous chef in the land.

Aoy auditions for Chef Paul and makes the cut to join his team as a fry chef. As she finds out, Chef Paul is extremely demanding, and he reduces her to tears with his intense demeanor, but Aoy refuses to give up. Chef Paul cooks for the super wealthy and is a showman as well as a chef, as the meals his team prepares are as much works of art as they are meals.

As Aoy works her way up, she is noticed by an entrepreneur who wants her to become the next Chef Paul and open her own top of the line restaurant. Aoy accepts his offer, and the second half of the movie positions Aoy against both her former mentor, Chef Paul, and her own conscience, as back home her father is ill and in need of her help, yet she has no plans to return home to assist her family, because she hungers for success and will do whatever it takes to get it.

I absolutely loved HUNGER. There is so much going on in this movie. It covers a wide array of themes and does a fantastic job with all of them.

At first, it’s easy to think of HUNGER as a variation of THE MENU (2022), a terrific movie which starred Ralph Fiennes as a master chef who also cooked for the super wealthy and who also was demanding and turned his meals into artistic performances. But other than this obvious comparison, they are completely different movies. THE MENU went down the path of melodrama and horror movie thriller, while HUNGER in spite of becoming quite thrilling remains a genuine drama.

And HUNGER is quite thrilling. Director Sitisiri Mongkolsiri imbues this one with lots of energy. It is intense from beginning to end.

As I said, it covers a wide range of themes. The obvious theme is one’s hunger for success, as Aoy is driven to be the best chef she can be. She tolerates Chef Paul because she knows she has a lot to learn from him. She ignores her family back home because she sees them as a distraction. Yet, the film has a lot to say about the price one pays for success as well. By film’s end, Aoy is doing a lot of soul searching and makes a thoughtful decision about what is most important to her in life. And it’s not blind success.

There’s the theme of the haves and have nots. Chef Paul cooks for the super-rich, and we see these people consuming ridiculous amounts of food, and the scenes where they feast and eat are shot in extreme close-ups that are all rather disgusting. They often resemble wild animals sloppily devouring their prey, even though they are all surrounded by opulence. Both Chef Paul and Aoy grew up poor, and Chef Paul is driven by an almost insane desire to make these people hunger for him. In effect, he’s making them give him all their money by providing them with food that he can create like no other, but he’s not doing it out of a love for food, but out of hate for his clients.

HUNGER is also about power, and the abuse of that power. Chef Paul is quite abusive to his staff, and as Aoy starts her own restaurant, she inherits some of Chef Paul’s dictatorial tendencies, which don’t always sit well with her.

HUNGER also does a terrific job with its food preparation scenes. This is one area where HUNGER is superior to THE MENU, as HUNGER does a much better job with its food scenes. This movie will make you hungry.

Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying is superb as Aoy. It’s a driven, intense performance that makes you want to join her on her journey and see her reach the success that she so desperately wants.

Likewise, Nopachai Chaiyanam is equally as fervid as Chef Paul, and the scenes towards the end of the movie where the two characters square off against each other at a lavish party where they are competing for the top chef honor are as exciting as you will find in any movie.

The screenplay by Kongdej Jaturanrasamee is superb. It tells an exciting story, creates memorable characters, and has so much to say about what drives people to succeed, while making some social commentary about the rich and the poor.

I loved HUNGER. Everything about it works.

It doesn’t just satisfy. It will also have you hungry for more.

I give it four stars.

—END–

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

RENFIELD (2023) – Nicolas Cage Rocks as Dracula; The Rest a Mixed Bag

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Horror comedies are a dime a dozen and are incredibly difficult to do.

The best ones play the horror straight and include spot-on humor. The worst are over-the-top silly and show no reverence towards the horror elements.

RENFIELD (2023), a new horror comedy which stars Nicholas Hoult as Dracula’s long-suffering servant Renfield who in 2023 joins a self-help group to give him the confidence to break ties with his narcissistic master, does show respect to its source material, Dracula, and does include moments of well-timed and clever humor, but overall is bogged down by a stale plot of gangsters and police corruption that sadly takes center stage and definitely gets in the way of the better story of Renfield and Dracula, making this one a mixed bag for sure.

The best part of RENFIELD is Nicolas Cage’s performance as Dracula. At first, it might seem with the obvious connections that this movie makes with Universal’s DRACULA (1931) that Cage’s performance is a direct homage to Bela Lugosi, but Cage doesn’t stop with Lugosi, as his interpretation also at times captures the essence of Christopher Lee. And director Chris McKay also shoots some scenes where Cage even resembles Carlos Villarias who played Dracula in Universal’s Spanish version of DRACULA (1931). But as good as Cage is, and as expected, he’s very good, he’s not enough to save this movie.

RENFIELD gets off to an impressive start as both Nicholas Hoult as Renfield and Nicolas Cage as Dracula are inserted into scenes from Universal’s DRACULA (1931) which both serves as an homage to the Bela Lugosi classic and also shows the origins of the relationship between Dracula and Renfield, making this movie a sequel of sorts to the 1931 movie. It’s a great way to start, and it had me excited about what was to follow.

The action then switches to present day where we see Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) joining a self-help group in New Orleans and listening to these people’s stories of how they are being abused by narcissistic companions. Since Renfield is still finding victims for Dracula, he targets these people’s abusers, hoping to do some good as well, by ridding the world of some pretty awful people by turning them into food for Dracula. Usually, a vampire’s victims turn into vampires themselves, and so Renfield would actually be making the world worse, when these folks turn into vampires, but the movie doesn’t go there.

Instead, the movie goes to places which frankly just aren’t very interesting. Renfield’s selective victim process inadvertently lands him in the path of a very powerful crime family who has nearly the entire police force in their pocket. The one honest cop— seriously, nearly everyone else in this movie who wears a badge is corrupt— Rebecca (Awkwafina) constantly finds her efforts to take down this family thwarted by her corrupt superiors.

The more interesting storyline follows Renfield’s efforts to distance himself from Dracula (Nicolas Cage), especially after opening up to the others in the support group who encourage him to stand up for himself, as well as Dracula’s efforts to keep Renfield as his slave. Whenever Dracula is on screen, the movie fires on all cylinders.

Unfortunately, and strangely, the film instead leans heavily on the crime family and police corruption plot, and even when Rebecca and Renfield team up, and Dracula joins forces with the crime family, things never become all that interesting.

The screenplay by Ryan Ridley and Robert Kirkman, a screenwriter for THE WALKING DEAD TV series, has as its centerpiece the support group sequences where Renfield talks about his relationship with the narcissistic Dracula. These are the best scenes in the movie and play out like a Saturday Night Live sketch. Unfortunately, neither Ridley nor Kirkman do much to build a movie around this idea. The crime family/police corruption plot is flat out awful, and why the movie spends so much time on this cliched claptrap is beyond me. And while the Renfield/Dracula storyline is better, the script is largely repetitive, as the same ideas are churned over repeatedly. As a result, the humor is not overly sharp. There are some moments and some jokes that land, but for the most part, the screenplay is a one trick pony that gets old long before its end credits run, which is pretty bad, since RENFIELD clocks in at a brief 93 minutes.

Director Chris McKay, who directed THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE (2017) and the science fiction flick THE TOMORROW WAR (2021), which I really liked, does a nice job with the visuals here. The aforementioned use of scenes from DRACULA (1931) were fun to see, and he does a terrific job shooting Nicolas Cage as Dracula, who is quite menacing. As I said, at times Cage resembles Lugosi, and he speaks like him, but at other times when he’s violent and hissing, he calls to mind Christopher Lee.

There are also a ton of action scenes in this movie, and they are polished and slick. Renfield inherits superhuman strength whenever he eats bugs— who knew! — a trait that comes in handy whenever he has to fight armies of bad guys or corrupt police officers. But while these scenes are handled well, they are all rather dull and unexciting. They are also incredibly bloody. You can probably fill multiple tubs with the amount of blood spilled in this movie, which brings me to another complaint. So much blood, yet both Renfield and Rebecca always seem to walk away without one ounce of the red stuff on their clothes or bodies. It’s all way too neat and sanitized.

Like I said, the best part of this movie is Nicolas Cage’s portrayal of Dracula. He takes the role seriously, and he plays the vampire king quite menacingly. He’s definitely not a spoof of the character. He makes Dracula downright evil throughout. But that’s not to say he’s not funny, and that may be the greatest strength of Cage’s performance, in that he is both funny and serious. He is able to make the audience laugh as Dracula without sacrificing the integrity of the character. Cage is so good here; he deserves to be in a better movie.

Nicholas Hoult is okay as Renfield, but the character is much less interesting here than Dracula. Hoult does his best to make Renfield a good guy, but the script lets him down. His efforts to free himself of Dracula never rise above the superficial. We just saw Hoult play a less than good guy in THE MENU (2022), a supporting performance that I actually enjoyed a bit more than his portrayal of Renfield.

Awkwafina is fine as Rebecca, but she is stuck in a horrible cliched storyline that drags down the entire movie.

I did really enjoy Brandon Scott Jones as the leader of the self-help group who in the movie’s best sequences gets some of the best moments and lines.

One other disappointing note. While this movie is a wonderful homage to Dracula, thanks to Cage’s performance, what it’s not is a wonderful homage to the title character, Renfield. Dwight Frye as Renfield is one of the best parts of the Lugosi DRACULA, and once you’ve seen that movie, you will never forget his performance. RENFIELD, in spite of being about Renfield, treats Frye as merely an afterthought. Which is all the sadder because even after nearly 100 years, no other actor has played Renfield in a movie the way Frye did. His performance remains the gold standard for the role, and yet, he died young and poor in 1943, and Hollywood has never really given him his due. He deserves better here.

RENFIELD rocks whenever Nicolas Cage is onscreen as Dracula, and its support group scenes are the only ones in this movie that go for the throat and really resonate. They’re hilarious. The rest of the movie features a dull subplot that actually grows into a main plot, and even the better storyline featuring Renfield and Dracula struggles to move forward, as it gets stuck repeating the same points over and over. This is one movie that really could have used… well, some self-help and support.

I give RENFIELD two stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

IN THE SPOOKLIGHT: ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1953)

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Bud Abbott and Lou Costello had a habit meeting monsters.

It all started in 1948 with their highly successful horror comedy monster mash, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948), which had Bud and Lou meeting up with the Frankenstein Monster (Glenn Strange), Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.) The film was wildly successful, and a major hit for the comedy duo.

They would repeat the formula three years later with ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN (1951), followed by today’s movie ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, and they closed out their monster meetings with ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY (1955)

Their initial outing meeting Frankenstein remains their best, as it has the funniest script, and one can make the argument that the quality dropped off with each successive movie. But there’s still a lot to like about ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE.

For starters, it stars Boris Karloff in the dual role as Jekyll and Hyde, and like his horror star predecessors in the previous Abbott and Costello monster films, he plays things straight. While he gives it his all, it ends up being just a decent performance, mostly because he’s overshadowed by the previous actors who played the role. Both Fredric March (who won an Oscar for playing Jekyll and Hyde) in the 1931 version, and Spencer Tracy in the 1941 remake deliver two of the strongest performances in a horror movie ever, and so the bar had already been raised quite high. But it’s Karloff, and so he still turns in a deliciously dark performance. One interesting tidbit regarding Karloff’s performance is unlike his predecessors, he portrays Dr. Jekyll as rather evil as well. Karloff’s Jekyll uses Hyde when he wants to kill people. Not exactly an exercise in good vs. evil. It’s more like evil and more evil!

The most memorable thing about ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE is the frightening make-up on Mr. Hyde by Bud Westmore. Mr. Hyde here is quite hideous and monstrous. In fact, he’s referred to throughout the movie as “the monster.” He’s certainly more of a werewolf type character than some of the other Mr. Hydes. Westmore used similar make-up on the diseased scientists in TARANTULA (1955), and on the monster in MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS (1958).

While I often say that one of the best parts of ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN is that the monsters play it straight, here in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, director Charles Lamont takes things a step further and for much of this movie plays the whole thing straight! There are some genuinely scary scenes in this movie, and while it is funny of course, I’ve always enjoyed this one more as a horror movie.

It opens with a very creepy murder scene on the foggy streets of London, where we witness Mr. Hyde emerge from the shadows to murder a man. Each time Hyde shows up, the film is scary. There are memorable scenes with him looking through a window, popping out in a jump scare, and creeping up behind the heroine. There are also plenty of action-packed chase scenes in this one.

The plot is quite simple, as Bud and Lou —- oh yeah, Abbott and Costello are in this movie! —-play detectives, goofily named Slim and Tubby, who are on the case to help hunt down the monster. The jokes are okay. Both ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN are funnier films than this one. Here, there’s a lot of physical comedy, including the aforementioned chase scenes, with one memorable one in particular over some rooftops.

The screenplay by Lee Loeb and John Grant is more amusing than funny. While director Charles Lamont helmed a bunch of Abbott and Costello movies, including some of their best, he seems more interested here in directing a monster movie, which has always been fine for me! I enjoy Abbott and Costello, and they’re fun in this movie, but they are certainly funnier in other flicks. There’s just not a lot of memorable gags or one-liners. There is one very goofy sequence where Tubby gets turned into a human-sized mouse, which in spite of taking place at a bar plays like a scene out of a children’s movie.

Helen Westcott makes for a fine heroine, Vicky Edwards, while Craig Stevens plays the dashing leading man, and Reginald Denny, who I always remember as Commodore Schmidlapp in what would turn out to be his final role in the Adam West BATMAN (1966) movie, plays the very British inspector.

Boris Karloff makes for an unusually villainous Dr. Jekyll, and gives the role his signature Boris Karloff treatment, meaning he’s soft-spoken yet sinister.

The true stars of ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE however are make-up artist Bud Westmore and stunt man Eddie Parker, who played Mr. Hyde. The monster in this flick is quite menacing.

While everyone else is tuning in for the laughs, I’m tuning in for the horror. In fact, this one gave me nightmares as a kid. Mr. Hyde was that chilling!

Are you up for some monster thrills with a few chuckles thrown in for good measure? Then check out ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE.

It’s one creepy comedy!

—END—

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES (2023) – Fun Fantasy Full of Humor and Adventure

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DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES (2023) is a fun movie that is enjoyable even if you don’t know anything about the famous role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Players of the game will probably appreciate it more, but in terms of audience satisfaction, this one delivers whether you’re a player or not.

To be honest, I really wasn’t all that interested in seeing DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES, as high fantasy really isn’t a genre I enjoy all that much. But the trailers for this one looked pretty darn funny, and writer/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein have a proven track record, as they wrote the screenplays for Marvel’s SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (2017), the first and probably my favorite of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, and the HORRIBLE BOSSES movies. They also directed the funny comedy GAME NIGHT (2018) starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams.

On the other hand, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the movie!

And that’s because the story in this one really doesn’t matter. It’s all just an excuse to write humorous lines for dashing witty characters in a colorful fantasy land where the good guys battle the bad guys, and the end result is never in question. Which could be the formula for a dreadfully dull movie, but that’s not the case here. At all. Because the dialogue is humorous and the characters are sharp-witted.

The whole thing is just popcorn-movie-fun.

The plot is about a group of thieves– and these are nice heroic thieves, Robin Hood style robbers— Edgin (Chris Pine), Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), Simon (Justice Smith), Doric (Sophia Lillis), and Xenk (Rege-Jean Page) who are in search of various relics which will lead them to the ultimate prize, a magical object that Edgin hopes to use to bring his murdered wife back to life. They each have their own reasons for wanting to help Edgin, and along the way they also need to rescue Edgin’s daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) who has been in the care of their former associate Forge (Hugh Grant), who has since changed his ways and is now poisoning Kira against her father, and also teaming with the main villain in the movie, the red devil Sofina (Daisy Head).

As I said, the end is never in doubt. You know who will come out on top long before the movie ever gets there, but the fun of this one is the journey along the way.

And that’s because the script by Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, and Michael Gilio is a good one. The situations are lighthearted, and most of the jokes land.

It also helps to have a talented cast. Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez seem to be having a lot of fun, and they have a good chemistry together. Pine is perfect as the dashing hero, and as light and witty as his presence is in this movie, his performance is even better because there’s a deep undercurrent of seriousness in the character, as Edgin identifies as a loser, telling his friends when they are down that he has consistently messed up, so much so that his wife’s death is on him, and so he’s driven to get things right this time and make things better.

Rodriguez also has a field day playing silent tough guy type, and her character Holga can pretty much hold her own against anybody and then some.

Justice Smith as Simon gets most of the best lines in the movie, while Sophia Lillis as the shapeshifting Doric gets to be the freckly soft-spoken cute presence when she’s not turning into various creatures. Lillis played young Beverly Marsh in the recent IT movies.

Rege-Jean Page is both handsome and humorous as Xenk, arguably the most powerful one in their group, and once again, Hugh Grant plays an over-the-top eccentric villain, something we just saw him do in Guy Ritchie’s OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE (2023). I enjoyed Grant’s performance more in OPERATION FORTUNE, because there was a deadly serious side to his character that doesn’t exist here in DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, but that’s not a complaint, because Grant is so good at playing these types of characters. Like the rest of the cast, he’s fun to watch throughout.

I also really enjoyed Daisy Head as the villainous Sofina. Head is serious and frightening and plays the role with a driven sense of purpose that looks like she walked off the set of GAME OF THRONES.

The movie also looks great, as it has a clear, crisp print that projects the colors of its fantasy world to the point where unlike a lot of movies with CGI created worlds, it looks incredibly realistic, like directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein were shooting on location. The action sequences are decent. They’re nothing earth-shattering, but they are certainly watchable and don’t go on for too long.

Sure, the story plays out like a story in a Dungeons and Dragons game— duh!— with lots of magic spells and conversations about which powers to use and the advantages and disadvantages of each, but this doesn’t get in the way of the success of this movie.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES is a fantasy adventure comedy that is as satisfying as it is jovial. It’s a summer popcorn movie that just happened to be released in the spring.

I give it three stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

LEADING LADIES: MIA GOTH

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Welcome back to LEADING LADIES, the column where we look at the careers of actresses in the movies, especially horror movies.

Usually, this column is a retrospective of actresses from the past and serves as a look back at their remarkable careers, but today we’re doing something different, as up today on LEADING LADIES it’s Mia Goth.

Goth is just starting her career, and she is enjoying enormous success, and since she is so young, just 29, I’m surmising that in the future there will be lots of updates to this column as her career continues. My favorite part of Goth’s roles thus far is that while she has appeared in numerous horror movies, she’s no scream queen. She’s usually the person causing the screaming!

So, let’s get started. Here’s a partial look at Mia Goth’s young career so far:

THE SURVIVALIST (2015)- Milja- Mia Goth’s first screen credit is in this thriller about a man who lives off the grid whose farm is discovered by a mother and a daughter, and what happens when he strikes a deal with them to live on his property.

A CURE FOR WELLNESS (2016) – Hannah- this is the first movie in which I saw Mia Goth, a superior horror movie by writer/director Gore Verbinski about a wellness center that isn’t quite what it seems. Jason Isaacs plays the creepy doctor, while Goth plays a mysterious woman who resides there. Goth is terrific in the role and made an immediate impression, as she was one of the best parts of this film, which had the look and feel of a classic Hammer horror movie.

SUSPIRIA (2018) – Sara – supporting role in this remake of the horror classic. Also starring Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, and Chloe Grace Moretz.

EMMA (2020) – Harriet Smith- another supporting role in this version of the Jane Austen novel, starring Anya Taylor-Joy in the title role of Emma, and Bill Nighy. This was the last film I saw at the movie theaters before Covid shut everything down in March 2020. I found this one to be somewhat of a misfire, but Goth is very good in the film.

X (2022) – Maxine/Pearl – horror movie by writer/director Ti West features some of Goth’s best work as she plays dual roles here. The film is about a group of filmmakers in the 1970s who set out to make a porn film on a farm, but once the elderly farmers discover what they are doing, they become unhinged and react very badly as X becomes quite the bloody and violent horror movie. Goth plays two roles, Maxine, the young star who wants to make a porn film as a first step to becoming a famous actress, and Pearl, the elderly woman who owns the farm and who goes full blown Norman Bates in the film’s second half. One of the best horror movies from 2022, and Mia Goth is a major reason why.

PEARL (2022) – Pearl – Mia Goth reprises the role of Pearl in this Ti West prequel to X, in which we learn Pearl’s back story. I enjoyed X more than PEARL, but Mia Goth is once again tremendous and fascinating.

INFINITY POOL (2023) – Gabi – another fabulous performance by Mia Goth in another terrific horror movie, this one by writer/director Brandon Cronenberg, David Cronenberg’s son. Alexander Skarsgard plays a struggling novelist who vacations on a remote island with his wife hoping to beat back his writer’s block. There, he meets a young woman, Gabi, played by Mia Goth, who with her husband invites James the author and his wife out to dinner, claiming to be a fan of his work. As they get to know each other, Gabi leads James on a horrific odyssey that leads to violence, murder, and depravity. And if that’s not enough, she seduces him as well.

Next up for Mia Goth is the final installment of Ti West’s X trilogy, MAXXXINE, in which Goth will once again play Maxine in a story that will take place after the events in X. I can’t wait!

In such a short time, Mia Goth has become one of the most dynamic actresses working in horror movies today.

That’s it for now. Thanks for joining me for this edition of LEADING LADIES. Join me next time when we look at the career of another leading lady in the movies.

As always, thanks for reading!

— Michael

KILL BOKSOON (2023) – Korean Action Thriller Stylish but Stale

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KILL BOKSOON (2023) is a new action thriller from South Korea about a single mom who also happens to be an assassin.

Premiering on Netflix this weekend, KILL BOKSOON tells the story of Gil Bok-soon (Jeon Do-yeon), a single mom who’s finding that raising a teenage daughter on her own is more challenging than killing people. The movie opens with a very stylish sequence on a bridge where Gil engages with a ninja, at first granting the man’s request that they fight to the death, but when she realizes she can’t defeat him, she simply shoots him dead. Gil always gets the job done.

She works for a company with very strict rules regarding assassinations, but she is able to push the boundaries because the man who runs the company has long admired her. When she’s not assassinating people, she’s trying to raise her teen daughter, who is giving her all she can handle and then some. But the main plot of this one is mostly concerned with the assassination firm for which Gil works, and when Gil goes too far and breaks a major rule, she finds herself at odds with her employers and has to fight for her life when the company decides she is no longer an asset.

KILL BOKSOON was written and directed by Sung-hyun Byun. The script maintains a very serious tone throughout and doesn’t go the route of high camp, which I found surprising because the movie opens with a rather campy fight sequence between Gil and the ninja. But KILL BOKSOON is not BULLET TRAIN (2022), the Brad Pitt actioner in which the assassins in that film seemed to be having more fun than kids at Disneyland. I wasn’t the biggest fan of BULLET TRAIN, so at first, I was grateful for the serious demeanor in KILL BOKSOON, but as the movie went on, and at two hours and seventeen minutes, it does go on, the film becomes weighed down by its seriousness.

Honestly, the whole plot about the assassination company I found boring and very superficial. I didn’t care about their rules or how they trained young assassins. A huge chunk of the movie is about these things. Gil Bok-soon is a really interesting character, and while the movie does focus on her, somehow, she still doesn’t have enough to do. The main plot doesn’t really give her an exciting conflict.

Jeon Do-yeon is terrific as Gil Bok-soon, and she’s equally at home playing the exhausted single mom and the bad-ass never-loses hired killer. She’s the best part of KILL BOKSOON, although the rest of the cast is also very good.

Director Sung-hyun Byun handles the many action sequences with precision. The fight choreography is impressive, but on the other hand, there’s nothing in this movie’s action sequences that we haven’t seen before. The opening fight scene may have been my favorite. At one point in this sequence, Byun shoots the action through the windows of a passing train for a neat effect.

But the screenplay was merely meh. While the acting is solid, the characters other than Gil and her daughter, are all rather dull and forgettable. There isn’t much of a plot, and sadly, after creating a cool character like Gil Bok-soon, Byun forgot to include a credible threat for her to face. The main threat, which turns out to be her boss, wasn’t exciting, and events leading up to the film’s conclusion simply weren’t that suspenseful.

I enjoyed the action scenes in KILL BOKSOON, and I really enjoyed Jeon Do-yeon’s performance as Gil, but the movie as a whole with its stale stoic plot about an assassination firm with rules and an honor code did very little for me.

As a result, I give KILL BOKSOON two stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

THE LOST KING (2022) – Tale of Woman’s Quest to Find Richard III’s Grave Quietly Satisfies

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THE LOST KING (2022) is a quiet yet satisfying movie that shouldn’t go unnoticed.

Filmed in 2022, it just got its U.S. release this weekend. Directed by Stephen Frears, who directed THE QUEEN (2006) and way back when, DANGEROUS LIASONS (1988), THE LOST KING is based on the true story of one woman’s obsession with finding the grave of Richard III.

It’s 2012 and Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins) is not in a happy place in her life. She is separated from her husband John (Steve Coogan) who has moved out, which makes taking care of their two boys all the more difficult. Work is not going well, as she watches much younger coworkers with very little experience get promotions instead of her. And she suffers from a chronic condition which keeps her exhausted all the time.

One day, while watching the play Richard III with her son, she is struck by one of the lines in the play where Richard says because his deformity, a hunched back, is so hated, he will push back with even more hate. This line doesn’t ring true to her, as she doesn’t believe someone would spew hate because of their disability, and she questions the accuracy of Shakespeare’s interpretation of the usurper king. She joins the local Richard III society and begins reading up on the king, and when she learns that his grave was never found, she becomes inspired to find it. The rest of the movie follows her quest to find Richard’s grave and chronicles all the adversity she has to get through to accomplish this task, being both an amateur and a woman.

Along the way, she starts seeing Richard III (Harry Lloyd) appear to her, and while she knows this is just an apparition from her own mind, she can’t help but feel that it’s something more, that the spirit of Richard himself is driving her forward to find his grave. And so, she persists, not only for Richard, but for herself, as she discovers that this process has energized her, and she feels more alive than she has in quite a long time.

THE LOST KING never really takes off or puts everything it has all together, but it’s a movie that is full of lots of little moments and points, and when summed up, it ends up being a decently satisfying movie with important things to say about the empowerment of women and also how history is not always accurately recorded.

Sally Hawkins is perfect as Philippa Langley. Hawkins, who was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her work in THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017), captures Langley’s drive and determination as she powers through her own disability, her chronic fatigue disease. My favorite part of her performance is she never allows Langley to deviate from her soft-spoken roots, and so while she perseveres to the point where she is the person who gets ahead of the professionals and leads the way to the improbable discovery of Richard III’s grave, she doesn’t let things get to her head. She remains a good person throughout.

That’s not to say that Langley didn’t have a big chip on her shoulder. She did. As she says in the movie, she doesn’t like the way some people seem to enjoy going out of their way to make people feel inferior. Langley faced push back from start to finish, from men taking issue with her use of the word “feelings,” when she would offer that as reasoning behind her thoughts for how she planned to proceed, to later when the University refused to give her credit for the discovery. In fact, this push back continues today, as the University of Leicester took issue with the interpretation of events as depicted in the movie, claiming that the film gives too much credit to Langley. Well, the movie is about her after all, and as stated at the beginning of the film, it’s her story.

The scenes where Langley pushes back against men who claim to know more than her are fun to watch. The screenplay by Steve Coogan, who also plays Langley’s husband John in the movie, Philippa Langley, and Jeff Pope, does a wonderful job carving out Langley’s character, and since Langley herself is one of the screenwriters here, I guess that’s to be expected! And it also does a nice job with the story of Richard III, how Langley believes he was wrongly recorded in history as a villain and usurper, because the new king wanted history recorded this way after Richard’s death, and since Richard wasn’t alive to refute things, history stood. It was important for Langley for Richard’s burial to acknowledge that he was the rightful king and not just a usurper, and this was important to her, at least as depicted in the movie, because that’s what irked her, the way people struck down those they thought were inferior or wouldn’t fight back. Or in Richard’s case couldn’t fight back because he was dead.

The screenplay also does a nice job with Langley’s family dynamic. I rarely like the plot point where the events in a movie bring an estranged couple back together again, but here it works. A lot of it has to do with Steve Coogan’s performance, but more of it is the writing itself. Coogan plays John Langley as a man who has grown tired of his wife because of her troubles, and while he has moved out and is seeing another woman, he still returns to Philippa’s home and helps her cook meals for the boys. At first, he dismisses her newfound passion, as it sounds crazy to him, but as he reads about Richard III and sees Philippa becoming empowered and happy, he changes his tune and supports her.

There’s a scene where their youngest son witnesses Philippa talking to Richard III, but of course he only sees her talking to herself. So, he tells his dad that mommy is talking to herself, and John replies, “We all do.” It’s one of the best lines in the movie and a key moment that tells the audience that John is now there for his ex-wife. And later the scene where he makes his boys stop playing video games so he can tell them the good news of what their mom just discovered, and Philippa hears her boys cheering her over the phone is priceless.

Coogan is an enjoyable actor who has been around for a long time. I enjoyed him a few years back when he played Stan Laurel in STAN & OLLIE (2018), which incidentally was written by fellow THE LOST KING screenwriter Jeff Pope.

Mark Addy is also memorable as archeologist Richard Buckley, who at first quickly dismisses Philippa’s request to dig in the city, but when the university cuts his funding, he changes his tune and accepts her offer. The two butt heads throughout, but when the university refuses to give her credit, it’s Buckley who takes offense and speaks up on her behalf.

James Fleet enjoys some fine moments as John Ashdown-Hill, a researcher and professor who offers Philippa support. And while Harry Lloyd isn’t asked to do much beyond smile, look handsome, and say a few words as Richard III, he does it all with royal style.

Director Stephen Frears effectively navigates through a subdued yet interesting story that never holds its high notes for very long. So, while THE LOST KING won’t blow you away, it will hold your interest for its quiet one hour and forty-eight-minute running time.

And that’s because it has two intriguing stories to tell, the one about Richard III, and the other about Philippa Langley and her efforts to both help a historical figure get the recognition she believed he deserved, and to help herself find some meaning and purpose in her life.

On top of this, the movie has two wonderful performances by Sally Hawkins in the lead role as Philippa, and Steve Coogan in a supporting role as her husband John. The two actors lead a solid ensemble cast as they bring this notable story of one woman’s passionate quest to correct history to life.

As I said at the outset, THE LOST KING never quite fires on all cylinders. But it makes enough of its points and captures enough small moments to make it a worthwhile trip to the theater, especially if you enjoy stories about perseverance and determination and history.

I give it two and a half stars.

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful