Tag Archives: Adam Driver

65 (2023) – Adam Driver Dinosaur Adventure Dead on Arrival

0
Posted on by

65 (2023), a new science fiction adventure starring Adam Driver as a space pilot who crash lands on Earth 65 million years ago smack in the middle of some menacing dinosaurs, has a fun premise, but then does nothing with it.

At all.

65 is the story of Mills (Adam Driver), a pilot who is about to leave on a two-year mission which will pay him well, money he needs to treat his ailing daughter Nevine (Chloe Coleman). But enroute, the ship is struck by a meteor and crash lands on an unknown planet, which happens to be Earth in the age of the dinosaurs. There is only one other survivor besides Mills, a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), and so, thinking of his own daughter, Mills vows to get her back home. The specifics of that endeavor include climbing a mountain to reach the ship’s escape pod, which is on the mountaintop because Mills’ ship split in two and that’s where the half with the pod landed. In their way, a jungle filled with hungry dinosaurs.

And oh, by the way. This is also the day when the catastrophic meteor strike which wiped out the dinosaurs is about to occur. So, if Mills and Koa don’t get off the planet, they will be pulverized by the doomsday meteor blast.

There are a lot of thought-provoking roads this movie could have taken. Sadly, however, there just isn’t much that is thought-provoking about this film.

Let’s start with the characters. Mills and his people come from a planet different than Earth, and yet they all look human, and they speak English. But they are about to crash land on Earth during a time before humans existed, and so, I thought, might there be some PROMETHEUS (2012) ideas floating around, that perhaps these folks would somehow become the parents of the human race? But that’s not what this movie is about. And I know, in the STAR WARS universe, they look human too, but STAR WARS is also more fantasy/adventure than science fiction. So, why is it worse here in 65 than in the STAR WARS movies? It’s not. It’s just that in a standalone film about aliens who crash land on Earth who look and act exactly like humans, well that stands out a little more here, and not in a good way.

The screenplay by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, both of whom also directed the movie, struggles from the outset with this exciting premise. The plot here seems like a no brainer for suspense and excitement, yet the film labors to generate any, especially at the beginning. The ship crashes, and Mills is alone for a while trying to figure out what happened, and all I could think about is, we the audience know what happened: they crashed on Earth in a place full of dinosaurs! Had this ship contained a group of people who were alive, we could see them all dealing with these dinosaurs immediately! Instead, the script makes the dubious decision to kill everyone on board in the crash, except for Mills (and then later Koa when he discovers her alive), and so when Mills looks about the jungle, you know he’s not going to be killed because the movie would then be over after about ten minutes, and so there’s no suspense and no excitement.

The screenplay also struggles with time. At the beginning of the movie, it’s stated that Mills will be gone for two years. Yet, on the trip, everyone is in stasis, which seems odd for a mission that will have them back home in two years. It’s not like they’re traveling for decades. But I can buy that perhaps they were saving on food and other things, so it would make sense for them to be asleep for the voyage. However, after the crash Mills learns news about his daughter, and while it’s not specifically stated, it just seems like more than two years have passed since he left.

The movie also employs some of what I like to call LOST IN SPACE logic. Now, I love the original 1960s science fiction TV show LOST IN SPACE (1965-68) and I’m a big fan, but the logic on that show was always silly, and science was never at the forefront of their scripts, unlike STAR TREK. Here, you have Mills sending out distress calls to his home planet, and he seems to believe they will send help immediately. One, he’s on an uncharted planet, so they don’t even know where it is, and two, he must be far from home. What kind of ships do they have? Can they navigate worm holes? Does he really expect them to just show up and rescue them? Apparently, he does. Which makes little sense.

Then, he believes that the escape pod/ship will save them. Yes, it will get them off the planet, but then what? What about fuel? Food? And where are they going to go once they’re flying in space? No one here is asking these questions. It’s all very lazy writing.

The movie isn’t interested in any of these things, but it is interested in dinosaurs. So, how are the dinosaurs in this movie? Not bad. There are some decent sequences here, my favorite involving a T-Rex towards the end of the movie. But a lot of the scenes are derivative of stuff we’ve already seen in the JURASSIC PARK movies. In short, the dinosaurs here are decent, but they don’t make or break this movie.

Screenwriters Beck and Woods also worked on the screenplays for THE QUIET PLACE movies, which told much better stories than the one told here in 65. THE QUIET PLACE movies took an interesting premise and ran with it. 65 takes a neat premise and drops the ball.

The acting, however, is fine. Adam Driver is really good as Mills, and he turns in an athletic, driven performance as he will stop at nothing to get Koa home. Driver’s performance, as expected, is one of the better parts of the movie.

Ariana Greenblatt is also excellent as Koa, but the sad truth is there’s not a whole lot for either of these two actors to do other than react to scary dinosaurs.

My favorite part of 65 is that they used the same sound effects from the Martian machines in the classic 1953 WAR OF THE WORLDS for Mills’ ship’s warning system. It was fun to hear it on the big screen, even if only for a few seconds.

65 is pure fluff, but not very thought-provoking or exciting fluff. Its tale of dinosaurs attacking people who have crash-landed on Earth 65 million years ago could have been intense and exciting, but it’s not. It’s superficial and sadly mediocre.

But because I like dinosaurs… and who doesn’t?… I give it 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

10 Worst Movies of 2022

0
Posted on by

It’s time now for a look back at the 10 worst movies I saw in 2022.

Here we go:

10. ORPHAN: FIRST KILL – this prequel to ORPHAN (2009), a horror movie I liked a lot, really isn’t all that bad; it’s just not all that good. It was fun to see Isabelle Fuhrman reprising the role of the dangerous “little girl” Esther, especially since Fuhrman’s no longer a “little girl” in real life, which meant the use of some forced perspective and a body double. This one has a brand-new plot twist, but overall, simply doesn’t work all that well. Two stars.

9. MONSTROUS – tepid horror movie starring Christina Ricci as a mom who flees with her seven-year-old son from an abusive husband. She moves into a new house and unfortunately, she has to deal with a supernatural presence there. Not awful by any means, but also simply not a lot going on here. Twist at end is predictable. Two stars.

8. THE BUBBLE – This comedy by writer/director Judd Apatow takes a fun concept— a group of actors stuck together at a hotel when their movie production shuts down because of a pandemic— and does little with it. More silly than funny, with just a few good laughs here and there. Two stars.

7. BLONDE – for me, the most disappointing movie from 2022. This Netflix film features an Oscar-nominated performance by one of my favorite actors, Ana de Armas, as Marilyn Monroe. Ana de Armas is indeed terrific, but the story is based on “imaginings” of Monroe’s life, as the screenplay is based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates, and so events unfold here in Monroe’s life that simply didn’t happen. There’s a brutal scene, for example, showing JFK treating her horribly, yet it didn’t happen. I just found the story elements here head-scratchers. Andrew Dominik’s direction doesn’t help, as this nearly three-hour movie is clunky and uneven. Onr and a half stars.

6. WHITE NOISE – Weird, confusing movie with a script in which nobody seems to make sense when they talk. Funny premise and interesting cast led by Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig are wasted in this unfunny story about a family who for one third of the movie are faced with a seemingly apocalyptic event, but this “event” wraps up neat and tidy long before this one ends. And then the film goes on about something else. One and a half stars.

5. DAY SHIFT – pretty awful horror comedy starring Jamie Foxx as a modern day vampire hunter. Not funny, not scary, and action scenes don’t wow. Dave Franco plays one of the more pathetic characters I’ve seen in a movie in years. Pretty forgettable stuff. One and a half stars.

4.CHOOSE OR DIE – horror movie starring Asa Butterfield about an evil video game from the 1980s which can alter reality, and it uses this power to force its player to make horrific choices, to harm people around them or die themselves, hence the title, Choose or die. Sounds better than it is. Very little of what happens makes sense, and the horror scenes aren’t as scary as they should be. Most inspiring bit in the movie is the casting of Robert Englund as himself, as he provides the voice on the promos for the video game. Sadly, Englund doesn’t actually appear in the movie. One star.

3. VIOLENT NIGHT -David Harbour playing Santa Claus in a Santa Claus action/comedy. What’s not to like? Actually, a lot of things, mostly a story that features some of the most unlikable characters in a movie I’ve seen in years, and we’re supposed to care about these people when they find themselves held hostage by a baddie who goes by the name of Scrooge? A disgruntled Santa decides to save the day. While Harbour is very good, and John Leguizamo is even better as the villain, mostly because he plays things straight, the film ends up being a cross between HOME ALONE and DIE HARD, with very unfavorable results. One star.

2.BARBARIAN – some folks really liked this horror movie. I wasn’t one of them. It’s not an anthology film, but its one plot is divided into three segments. The first one starring Georgina Campbell and Bill Skarsgard is by far the best, and so the film gets off to a very scary start, but things change in the second segment starring Justin Long, as the entire tone of the film shifts to something much lighter and offbeat, and then for the third and final segment, which wraps everything up, things fall completely apart. You really have to suspend disbelief to buy into some of the plot points here. One star.

1. UNCHARTED – My pick for the worst movie of the year is the film I enjoyed the least. This silly action-adventure comedy pairs Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg as fellow treasure hunters seeking treasure. The script is ludicrous, the inane banter nonstop, and the plot, well everything these two knuckleheads do works, and so there’s no adversity or conflict, just banter, banter, and more banter. Have I said there was banter in this movie? One long snooze of a movie. Unless, of course, you like… banter. One star.

There you have it. My list of the 10 Worst Films from 2022. Overall, 2022 wasn’t really a bad year for movies. There were far more movies that I liked than I disliked this year,

Okay, let’s get back to 2023! See you at the movies!

As always, thanks for reading!

—Michael

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars- Excellent

Three stars- Very Good

Two stars- Fair

One star- Poor

Zero Stars- Awful

WHITE NOISE (2022) – Bizarre Movie Lives Up to Its Title and Says Very Little

0
Posted on by

I’m sure there’s an audience out there somewhere who will enjoy WHITE NOISE (2022).

To borrow a phrase from Woody Allen’s ANNIE HALL (1977), the rest of us are all due back on planet Earth.

WHITE NOISE is one bizarre movie.

Written and directed by Noah Baumbach, the man who gave us MARRIAGE STORY (2019), which I liked, WHITE NOISE is a story told in three parts, and none of them really work. Categorized as a comedy/drama/horror movie, and now available on Netflix, WHITE NOISE tells the story of a contemporary family in crisis. There’s the dad, college professor and Hitler expert Jack Gladney (Adam Driver), his wife Babette (Greta Gerwig), and their myriad of children who all act like an updated version of THE BRADY BUNCH.

On the surface, things seem wonderful. Jack and Babette seem extremely happy and act like the perfect couple, but soon cracks in the armor emerge, and it starts when their daughter Denise (Raffey Cassidy) spies her mom popping a pill and then denying it. The dialogue in this early sequence is playful and thoughtful, but it’s not easy to follow, and that’s because everyone in this movie speaks like an academic. We later see Jack and his fellow university professors chatting around a table, and their conversation is both highbrow and irrelevant, and it dawned on me as the rest of the movie played out that every character in this film, even the kids, speak this way. It’s as if Baumbach took notes on everything his college professors said to him and turned it into dialogue for his characters. As a result, the dialogue throughout the movie is not realistic because most everyday people don’t speak this way. I could even buy Jack and Babette’s kids talking in this manner, but everybody in this film sounds the same. And frankly, their conversations are difficult to follow, as they seemingly offer one non sequitur after another.

The second part of the story, and the movie’s centerpiece, follows the plot point of a truck colliding with a train, which releases toxic chemicals into the air, and Jack and his family like the rest of his town are forced to evacuate. This scenario should have been a laugh out loud one, but once more, the dialogue gets in the way and the hoped-for laughter never comes.

And the final part of the story follows Jack’s attempts to learn the truth about why Babette is taking a mysterious drug. This last sequence is the worst sequence in the movie, and so while I was on board for two thirds of this one, trying to buy into it in spite of the dialogue, the end completely lost me and it became a labor to sit through till the end credits, which actually feature a neat choreographed number with people in a grocery store, which sadly, is the liveliest part of the entire movie, the end credits. But you have to sit through the two hour plus movie first.

Ultimately, the story is about people’s fear of death, fear of the idea that we are simply working our way towards oblivion, that no one gets off this planet alive. A thought-provoking theme to be sure, but what a terribly convoluted way to go about it. Woody Allen tackled death much more effectively in most of his movies.

The screenplay here by Baumbach, based on the book by Don DeLillo, is a labor to sit through. I couldn’t relate to any of the characters, mostly because they did not seem or speak like real people.

I usually enjoy Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, and for the most part I enjoyed them here, especially during the film’s initial sequence. They are a likable couple, and their conversations are thoughtful and refreshing, but the longer the movie goes on, the weirder things get, and the less relatable they become. By film’s end, I didn’t care about either character.

Don Cheadle is also in the cast as Jack’s friend and fellow professor Murray, who wants to become an Elvis expert. Cheadle is fine, even though his storyline is a snooze.

I really thought I was going to like WHITE NOISE. It had an interesting premise, a talented writer/director at the helm, and a good cast. But all this promise was sunk by a story that turned out not to be that interesting, with dialogue that was unrealistic, and a central theme about the fear of death that was never dealt with heads on.

WHITE NOISE is supposed to be a story about a family that is distracted from the real things in life by all the white noise which the world throws at them. But ironically, the film ends up living up to its title. It ends up being simply background noise with nothing of merit to say.

I give it one and a half stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars- Excellent

Three stars- Very Good

Two stars- Fair

One star- Poor

Zero Stars- Awful

Movie Lists: SPIKE LEE MOVIES

0
Posted on by

spike lee

Welcome back to MOVIE LISTS, the column where we look at— lists pertaining to movies. Duh!

Up today, it’s a look at the career of director Spike Lee, which of course is still going strong, so while this is an incomplete list, it’s still an important one because Spike Lee is an important filmmaker.

Now, I haven’t really seen enough Spike Lee movies to consider myself a true fan, but I’ve generally enjoyed his work, and his most recent movies have spoken to current racial tensions in ways that have really resonated, so Lee has been on my mind lately more than ever. And rightly so. Lee makes movies that make you pay attention.

Okay, here’s a partial list of Spike Lee’s 93 directorial credits:

JOE’S BED-STUY BARBERSHOP: WE CUT HEADS (1983)- Lee’s first directorial credit.

SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT (1986) – Spike Lee’s first legitimate hit, a comedy about a young woman and her three lovers. Well-received by critics upon its initial release. I was fortunate enough to see it when it first came out, as I was in my senior year at Boston University and saw it when it premiered as part of one of my film classes.

In addition to directing and writing the screenplay, Lee also appears in the movie as one of the boyfriends.

SCHOOL DAZE (1988) – Lee’s next film, a comedy/drama/musical about a fraternity pledge at a black college. Starring Laurence Fishburne and a young Giancarlo Esposito who would go on to star in a lot of Lee’s movies.

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989) – Powerful tale of race relations in Brooklyn. Starring Danny Aiello, John Turturro, and again, Giancarlo Esposito.

MO’ BETTER BLUES (1990) – again directed, written by, and starring Spike Lee, this one is the story of two jazz musicians played by Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes.

JUNGLE FEVER (1991) – Lee’s take on interracial relationships, starring Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra.

MALCOLM X (1992) – probably my favorite Spike Lee movie. This riveting bio pic of African American leader Malcolm X also features one of my favorite performances by Denzel Washington of all time, in the lead role as Malcolm X.

CROOKLYN (1994) – a look at a black family in Brooklyn in 1973.

CLOCKERS (1995)- crime thriller about drug pushers and cops in Brooklyn, starring Harvey Keitel and Lee regular John Turturro.

GIRL 6 (1996) -comedy/drama about a struggling actress who turns to sex to make money.

GET ON THE BUS (1996) – chronicles a bus ride to Washington D.C. for the Million Man March.

HE GOT GAME (1998)- basketball player drama starring Denzel Washington.

SUMMER OF SAM (1999) -Lee’s take on the Son of Sam murders.

BAMBOOZLED (2000)- comedy drama about a frustrated African American writer who in a fit of frustration comes up with a blackface minstrel show only to see it become a hit.

25TH HOUR (2002) – drama about the last 24 hours of a convicted drug dealer, starring Edward Norton.

INSIDE MAN (2006) – Tense crime drama about negotiations over a hostage situation following a bank robbery, starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, and Jodie Foster.

MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA (2008) – World War II drama about a group of black soldiers who get trapped in a village.

RED HOOK SUMMER (2012) – drama about a boy who spends a summer with his deeply religious grandfather.

OLDBOY (2013) – weird action drama, a remake, about a man, played by Josh Brolin, held captive for twenty years who is then suddenly released, and he sets out to find answers to why this happened to him. This one just didn’t work for me.

DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS (2014) – thriller about a mysterious curse which results in a thirst for blood.

CHI-RAQ (2015) – modern day adaptation of a play by Aristophanes.

BLACKKKLANSMAN (2018) – the first Spike Lee film since MALCOLM X that I really, really enjoyed. Intriguing from start to finish, it tells the story of a black cop played by John David Washington who infiltrates the KKK but then needs the help of a fellow white cop played by Adam Driver to pull off the ruse. Thought-provokig throughout, it’s actually based on real events.

DA 5 BLOODS (2020)- Lee’s most recent film to date, and his first for Netflix. I actually enjoyed this one even more than BLACKKKLANSMAN, as its story of four black veterans of the Vietnam war who return to Vietnam in 2020 to reclaim the remains of their fallen platoon leader speaks to today’s modern day Black Lives Matter movement with a clarity that is seldom found in the movies. An outstanding movie that really speaks to the plight of the black male in the United States.

And there you have it, a brief, partial list of the movies of Spike Lee, one of the most influential film directors working today.

I hope you enjoyed this MOVIE LISTS column and will join me again next time when we look at another list pertaining to the movies.

As always, thanks for reading!

—Michael

 

 

MARRIAGE STORY (2019) – Painfully Authentic Depiction of Divorce

0
Posted on by

marriage story

I finally caught up with MARRIAGE STORY (2019) the other night, the only 2019 Best Picture nominee that I had not seen before the Oscars aired last week.

I had heard that its depiction of divorce was depressingly realistic, and after finally having seen it,  I have to agree. MARRIAGE STORY gets the emotions right.

MARRIAGE STORY opens with a voice-over by Charlie (Adam Driver) describing all the reasons why he fell in love with his wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), and these reasons play out in little vignettes shown on-screen. Then it’s Nicole’s turn as she describes why she fell in love with Charlie, again in a voice-over narration with the accompanying vignettes. It turns out these were written by Charlie and Nicole as part of their mediation process, and when Nicole refuses to read out loud what she wrote, she walks out of the mediation meeting, and thus MARRIAGE STORY begins.

Charlie runs a very successful theater group in New York City, he as the director, and Nicole as the lead actress, but Nicole has always longed to return to Los Angeles where her family lives, but Charlie has never been interested in that idea, which has caused Nicole stress over the years. When Nicole accepts a role in a TV pilot, she moves to LA with their eight year-old son Henry (Azhy Robertston), a move that Charlie believes is temporary.

But once there, Nicole hires divorce attorney Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern) who reminds Nicole that this process is about her getting what she wants and that there is no reason why she has to settle for things she doesn’t want, a la things that Charlie wants. When Charlie arrives in LA, he’s served the divorce papers, and he feels blindsided and betrayed by Nicole as he was under the impression that they were not going to hire lawyers, but Nicole makes it clear that she is unhappy and this is the only way she is going to get what she wants.

Charlie hires a more sensitive attorney Bert Spitz (Alan Alda), but after losing continually to Nora’s hardball tactics, he hires a tougher attorney, Jay Marotta (Ray Liotta) because as he tells Nicole, “I needed my own assh*le.”

As things get uglier and nastier, Nicole and Charlie have to deal with all their emotions even as they realize they don’t really want to hurt each other, in spite of the fact that their marriage is over and their divorce is imminent.

I really liked MARRIAGE STORY, even though watching it was a very uncomfortable experience.  As I said, it gets the emotions right. Through Nicole and Charlie, we witness the pain of watching one’s family and way of life disintegrate before one’s eyes, the frustration of suddenly being adversaries with the very person they’d been in love with, having to keep it together in front of their child, having to deal with their child’s emotions, but as a parent working alone. It makes them say things they simply don’t mean, as the whole ordeal gets inside their heads and changes them, scars them.

All of this is depicted very accurately in MARRIAGE STORY, as well as the sense that even while the divorce is happening, there’s the feeling that Nicole and Charlie don’t really want it to happen. That they love each other and don’t really want to hurt each other, but yet the marriage is over, and so there’s this weird mix of fighting for what you want and need vs. wanting on some level to keep that sense of family together even as the actual family is now separate.

So, kudos to writer/director Noah Baumbach for creating such a genuine portrait of divorce. The screenplay is outstanding.

As is the acting, especially by the two leads. Adam Driver continues to impress me as an actor. Sure, he plays Kylo Ren in the new STAR WARS movies, and he’s very good in the role, but he’s been better in other movies, in films like LOGAN LUCKY (2017) and BLACKKKLANSMAN (2018). His work here in MARRIAGE STORY is best of all.

Driver makes Charlie a self-absorbed character who is totally at home directing for the stage and perfectly content in that world, but it blinds him to the needs of his wife. He enjoys some powerful scenes, especially with Johansson, as their arguments are fiery and agonizing. Driver’s best moment comes when Charlie unleashes upon Nicole wishing her deader than dead, and then he just collapses, overcome with emotion, before apologizing for what he said.

Scarlett Johansson is just as good. As Nicole, she’s the one who seeks the divorce, but she’s also the one who needs the change, as Charlie is so stuck in his own world nothing she has said or done so far had been able to reach him. When she files for divorce, and Charlie tries to reconcile, in her eyes, it’s already too late. She believes if she goes back it’ll be the same, and she wants more for her life.

Johansson was equally as good as another mother Rosie in JOJO RABBIT (2019), which means 2019 was a pretty darn good year for Johansson.

Laura Dern won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role here as divorce attorney Nora Fanshaw. Dern is excellent, no question, although I thought both Florence Pugh in LITTLE WOMEN (2019) and Kathy Bates in RICHARD JEWELL (2019) gave better performances. That’s not to take anything away from Dern, who like Johansson, also enjoyed a stellar 2019. Dern was also in LITTLE WOMEN, as matriarch Marmee March, and she’s excellent in both films. In fact, these two performances are among Dern’s best ever. She’s been making movies for a long time, and so I for one was happy she won the Oscar. And I’m old enough to remember one of her earliest movies, SMOOTH TALK (1985), which I saw at the movies. She impressed me then and has continued to do so ever since.

But the main reason to see MARRIAGE STORY is to watch Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson performing at the top of their game. As good as the script is, MARRIAGE STORY ultimately works because of Driver and Johansson. They nail their roles, and the emotions that go along with them.

MARRIAGE STORY is not a fun movie, but it is an accurate one. Its depiction of divorce is painfully spot-on.

As such, it’s one of the finest dramas of 2019.

—END—

 

 

 

WORST MOVIES 2019

0
Posted on by

it chapter two

Here’s a look at my picks for the Ten Worst Movies of 2019:

10. PET SEMATARY

Coming in at #10 it’s PET SEMATARY, which is both an inferior remake of the 1989 movie and a pretty tepid take on one of Stephen King’s scariest novels. The changes made to King’s story here have potential but sadly the filmmakers do little with them. And as much as I like John Lithgow as an actor, he did not make me forget Fred Gwynne’s memorable performance as Jud Crandall in the 1989 film.

9. THE DEAD DON’T DIE

Fans of writer/director Jim Jarmusch seemed to really like this one, but for me, this zombie comedy just didn’t work. For starters, it had no sense of the genre, as its zombie/horror elements were weak and uninspired. In spite of an impressive cast which included Bill Murray and Adam Driver in lead roles, the deadpan breaking-the-fourth-wall humor I found obvious and mundane.

THE DEAD DON'T DIE

8. THE PRODIGY

One of the more forgettable horror movies of 2019. Another evil child chiller that offers nothing new.

7. ISN’T IT ROMANTIC

No. It isn’t. It’s not even that funny. This rom com starring Rebel Wilson as a cynical romantic who suddenly finds herself living in a romantic comedy can’t seem to move beyond its clever gimmick. While some of the humor works, most of it doesn’t, making for a lukewarm entry in the rom com genre.

6. IT CHAPTER TWO

This long, overblown, and slow-moving horror “epic” which clocks in at two hours and forty-nine minutes would have struggled to be scary even in half the time. Simply put, the main characters here were far more interesting when they were children, which is why part one of this flick was more entertaining. A waste of a good cast, as even the presence of James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain can’t save this one. Even worse than the incredibly long running time is how not scary Pennywise is in this movie. Based on Stephen King’s novel.

5. RAMBO: LAST BLOOD

Bottom of the barrel entry in the RAMBO series, this uninspired revenge flick is just that: Rambo exacts vengeance on thugs who abducted his niece. The ridiculous ending seems to be inspired by HOME ALONE (1990). The film makes no effort to lend credibility to the idea that Rambo at his advanced age could take down a gang of violent drug heavies singlehandedly.

rambo last blood stallone

4. ANNABELLE COMES HOME

Another awful horror movie from 2019.  In spite of the fact that Annabelle is one creepy doll, filmmakers continue to struggle to write worthwhile stories about her. This one wastes the talents of Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, who show up only for the beginning and end. Someone should lock Annabelle in her glass case and throw away the key. The series just isn’t very good.

annabelle comes home

3. THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA

My pick for the worst horror movie of 2019. No surprise, this one also takes place in THE CONJURING/ANNABELLE universe, which simply put, is not the universe you want your horror movie to appear in. I loved the original THE CONJURING (2013). The ensuing movies just haven’t been very good. Here, we have a demon that preys on children, and a priest who does battle against it in scenes that are laughably bad.

2. COLD PURSUIT-

The Liam Neeson actioner may have worn out its welcome with this movie, in which Neeson plays a snowplow driver who seeks vengeance against the thugs who murdered his son. Blah, blah, blah. Been there. Done that. This one also makes some bizarre attempts at humor, with some over the top superimposed captions following each character’s violent demise. My least favorite Liam Neeson movie in quite some time.

1. THE LIGHTHOUSE

Yeah, I know. For some folks, this was their pick for the best movie of the year. And yes, I can’t take anything away from writer/director Robert Eggers’ masterful black and white cinematography. This might be the best made movie I’ve ever loathed so much. Photography looks awesome, but this tale of two lighthouse keepers, played by Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, who become stranded there together for an extended period of time, and hence have to deal with each other, is a story of boredom and madness, and for me, it provoked just that. I wasn’t interested in either character, and watching them simply deal with each other over the course of this film was a maddening experience that left me completely bored. Story matters. Magnificent cinematography on its own does not a movie make. I often judge a movie by how soon I’d want to see it again. I never want to see THE LIGHTHOUSE again.

the lighthouse

Hence, it’s my pick for the worst movie of 2019.

And there you have it, my picks for the worst films of 2019.

As always, thanks for reading!

—Michael

Books by Michael Arruda:

DARK CORNERS, Michael Arruda’s second short story collection, contains ten tales of horror, six reprints and four stories original to this collection.

Dark Corners cover (1)

Waiting for you in Dark Corners are tales of vampires, monsters, werewolves, demonic circus animals, and eternal darkness. Be prepared to be both frightened and entertained. You never know what you will find lurking in dark corners.

Ebook: $3.99. Available at http://www.crossroadspress.com and at Amazon.com.  Print on demand version available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1949914437.

TIME FRAME,  science fiction novel by Michael Arruda.  

How far would you go to save your family? Would you change the course of time? That’s the decision facing Adam Cabral in this mind-bending science fiction adventure by Michael Arruda.

Ebook version:  $2.99. Available at http://www.crossroadpress.com. Print version:  $18.00. Includes postage! Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.

IN THE SPOOKLIGHT, movie review collection by Michael Arruda.

InTheSpooklight_NewText

Michael Arruda reviews horror movies throughout history, from the silent classics of the 1920s, Universal horror from the 1930s-40s, Hammer Films of the 1950s-70s, all the way through the instant classics of today. If you like to read about horror movies, this is the book for you!

 Ebook version:  $4.99.  Available at http://www.crossroadpress.com.  Print version:  $18.00.  Includes postage. Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.

FOR THE LOVE OF HORROR, first short story collection by Michael Arruda.  

For_the_love_of_Horror- original cover

Print cover

For the Love of Horror cover (3)

Ebook cover

 

Michael Arruda’s first short story collection, featuring a wraparound story which links all the tales together, asks the question: can you have a relationship when your partner is surrounded by the supernatural? If you thought normal relationships were difficult, wait to you read about what the folks in these stories have to deal with. For the love of horror!

 Ebook version:  $4.99.  Available at http://www.crossroadpress.com. Print version:  $18.00.  Includes postage. Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (2019) – Doesn’t Offer Much of a Rise

1
Posted on by

star wars the rise of skywalker

STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (2019), the final film in the epic nine movie STAR WARS saga, is indicative of what the series has ultimately become. It’s a superiorly crafted movie in which everything looks amazing but without compelling storylines and characters, there’s simply not all that much to be excited about.

Ouch!

But it’s true.

When the original STAR WARS (1977) came out, I was in 7th grade, and I absolutely loved it. I loved its sequel, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980) even more, so much so that today all these years later it remains my favorite in the series.

But then came RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983). I was in college for this one, and it marked the first time I was disappointed with a STAR WARS movie. It’s not just the Ewoks either, although they were my least favorite part of the film. I thought the pacing and the way it went about telling its story was all off, especially following upon the heels of EMPIRE.

The prequels in the middle of the series, which chronicled the back story of villain Darth Vader, were meh, although I did enjoy STAR WARS: EPISODE III – REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005).

And while the latest three STAR WARS films— THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015), THE LAST JEDI (2017) and now this one, have successfully recaptured the spirit and feel of the original trilogy, at the same time introducing new characters and closing the book on some of the original characters, they have hardly been game changers.

The biggest culprit? The writing.

I don’t mean to imply that the folks writing these movies are bad writers, but rather, that good writing is not the priority with these films. In other words, time and energy is spent on the technical side of these movies rather than on the written word. As a result, very little of what happens on screen has any resonance.

Here in STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, new character Rey (Daisy Ridley) is still searching for answers regarding her parentage, still training to become a Jedi, and oh yeah still busy battling the villainous First Order. Yup, she has a lot on her plate.

Likewise, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is still busy with his quest to take over the galaxy, which means sometimes leading the First Order and other times wooing Rey to join him in order to become the galaxy’s all-powerful super couple. He has trouble with his past as well, since his parents are Han Solo— who he killed in THE FORCE AWAKENS—- and Princess Leia— but his granddaddy is Darth Vader. He kinda wants to be like his grandpa, only more powerful.

To complicate matters, it’s learned that the dastardly Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) didn’t really die at the end of THE RETURN OF THE JEDI but has been secretly hibernating waiting for his chance to crush the rebellion once and for all.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Yup, we’ve heard this all before. Like the TERMINATOR franchise, the STAR WARS series also suffers from serious plot redundancy.

All this being said, I certainly enjoyed STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. It’s an entertaining piece of filmmaking. It’s just not an entertaining piece of storytelling.

Regarding the two main characters, I like them both a lot, so that’s not a problem. Rey is the most compelling character in this new trilogy, and Daisy Ridley is superb in the role. She strikes a nice balance between serious intensity, angst over her unknown familial roots, and a sense of caring and strength not really seen in any of the other characters. She makes for a much more interesting Jedi than either Luke Skywalker, Ben Kenobi, or Anakin Skywalker. And it’s refreshing to have the most powerful character in the new series be a woman.

She’s the best part of this final trilogy, and the story here doesn’t really let her down either. The answers provided regarding her parentage are adequate.

Kylo Ren has grown on me throughout the series. I was not a fan back in THE FORCE AWAKENS, but he won me over in THE LAST JEDI. Adam Driver is excellent as the tortured wannabe villain who strives to outdo the memory of Darth Vader but can’t seem to shake the influence of his parents Leia and Han Solo.

The other new characters I have not enjoyed as much. Both Finn (John Boyega) and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) have only been okay, although they enjoy some of their best moments in the series in this movie. They’re the energetic wise-cracking resistance fighters, and they do a nice job filling in the for the spirit of Han Solo, but nearly all of their banter seems rehashed from the original series. It definitely suffers from the “having seen this all before” issue.

And of course, since this is being billed as the final film in the series, it attempts to wrap everything up nicely from all the previous movies. Sort of. There are some glaring omissions. More on that in a bit.

Mark Hamill returns as Luke Skywalker, but don’t expect too much from him here, since he’s relegated to appearing in Force-ghost form, since the character died in the previous movie.

Carrie Fisher returns sporadically in archive footage as Princess Leia since Fisher passed away before this movie was filmed.

Old friends Chewbacca, C-3PO, an R2D2 are all back, with Chewie and 3PO getting the best moments. Billy Dee Williams returns as Lando Calrissian, who serves as a sort of cheerleader to Finn and Poe, telling them that in his day neither he, Luke, Leia, or Han, knew exactly what they were doing either, and they just relied on each other and made things happen, which is a point well taken as it inspires Finn and Poe to get off their butts and save the galaxy.

Now back to those omissions. For a movie wrapping up the final chapter of a nine film series not to include Darth Vader, Ben Kenobi, or Yoda, that’s just flat-out weird, and disappointing. Darth Vader was the larger than life villain in the first trilogy, and then the second trilogy was devoted to his back story, and for him here to receive nary a mention other than his beat-up helmet is simply odd.

As I said, the screenplay by Chris Terrio and J.J. Abrams fails to really resonate on any level other than the superficial. The story itself is a rehash of earlier movies— the rebellion is outmanned and outgunned, how will they ever succeed? Yadda, yadda, yadda. And the characters are hardly exciting.

The two best characters, Rey and Kylo Ren, enjoy the best moments in the film, but even these moments aren’t original. For example, Rey has her “I am your father moment” and Kylo Ren has his “I love you. — I know,” moment, but neither one is as good as the original scenes from which they’re inspired. And that’s because little that happens to these two feels new at all.

J.J. Abrams returned to the director’s chair for this one. He had also directed THE FORCE AWAKENS.  He takes great care to carve out various homage moments throughout, all the way down to the final scene, and these bits are enjoyable and appreciated.

But any emotion gets lost in an incredibly fast pace which features one action scene after another. THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is the kind of movie I generally do not enjoy, one that never stops to take a breath or seemingly have a meaningful conversation. The drawback obviously is the characterizations suffer mightily and you end up with a movie with characters you don’t care about. The only saving grace is we’ve met these characters before, so we know who they are, but it still makes for boring storytelling.

It’s one of the reasons the MARVEL superhero movies are generally always good. They never sacrifice character development, even in the AVENGERS movies which featured a ton of main characters. Great care is spent on these folks’ personalities so that nearly every time they’re on-screen something notable is happening. That’s not the case in the STAR WARS series.

The special effects are amazing as always, but are there memorable images and action sequences? Not really, no.  For example, one sequence featuring a raging ocean has potential, but when it plays out, it’s all so smooth and harmless, and then it’s on to the next action scene.

STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is the ninth film in the STAR WARS series, and it seems like it. If you’re a fan of the series, you no doubt will enjoy its Jedi vs. Dark Side angst, eye-popping space action sequences, and colorful wise-cracking quips, but for those of us who see tons of movies year in and year out, these films are hardly on the meter for what constitutes the best in modern cinema.

Sadly, this wasn’t always the case.

After all, “May the Force be with you” didn’t enter the cultural lexicon by accident.

—END—

 

 

 

 

THE DEAD DON’T DIE (2019) – Understated Satire Just Happens to Have Zombies In It

0
Posted on by

THE DEAD DON'T DIE

Some day, perhaps, THE DEAD DON’T DIE (2019) might be remembered as a masterpiece of understated humor and satire.

Alas, today is not that day.

THE DEAD DON’T DIE is a new horror comedy starring Bill Murray and Adam Driver that is being marketed as a zombie comedy, but you know what? It’s not really a zombie movie. Oh, there are zombies in it, but it’s the most non-zombie zombie movie I’ve ever seen, which is not going to make it a hit among horror fans.

In fact I’d wager to guess that most horror fans will not like this movie. Even though it mentions George Romero and throws in a few Easter eggs here and there, it largely ignores the zombie films which have come before it. Sometimes this can be a good thing, but in this case it is not.

Heck, since its comedy really isn’t all that biting— heh, heh!— comedy fans aren’t going to be too keen on this one either. Yup, I’m going to go out on a—limb— and predict that this one will not perform all that well at the box office.

That being said, THE DEAD DON’T DIE is not an awful film. I actually liked it, in a weird offbeat sort of way, and that’s because at the end of the day THE DEAD DON’T DIE is satire, that just happens to have zombies in it. It’s the type of comedy that Bob Newhart would have made in his heyday, with Murray filling in here for the Newhart role. It has a few pointed things to say about our present day society, but the writing is never as sharp, and the direction never as tight as a movie like this needs it to be. Even when the film breaks the fourth wall, the humor still struggles. Yet, there are places where it works and works well.

In THE DEAD DON’T DIE, Police Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and his fellow officers Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) and Mindy Morrison (Chloe Sevigny) usually have nothing more urgent to do in their small town of Centerville than ask their local Hermit Bob (Tom Waits) whether or not he stole chickens from the annoying farmer Frank Miller (Steve Buscemi). But suddenly things grow strange.

The daylight lasts longer than usual, watches and cell phones stop working, and soon the dead start to rise and begin eating the townspeople. The culprit? The controversial use of global fracking has affected the earth’s rotation, and as a result all these freaky things start happening. Supposedly. The people aren’t sure, because the government cites global fracking as safe and accuses scientists of spreading false information. Sound familiar?

How Robertson and his fellow officers react to these horrific happenings is the story told in THE DEAD DON’T DIE. Trouble is, the biggest way they react is by standing around and doing nothing. So much for compelling storytelling!

THE DEAD DON’T DIE was written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, a director known for his deadpan style. Jarmusch is tenacious here with his slow-moving satire, which might be the film’s greatest asset, that it never deviates from its slow pace, its unassuming humor, and its coy messages on society.

The satire in THE DEAD DON’T DIE is there. It’s just not always all that clear. For instance, Steve Buscemi’s Farmer Frank wears a red cap which reads “Keep America White Again,” a slogan which in itself satirizes the modern-day message of the Trump presidency as well as poking fun at the overall intelligence of his followers with its grammatically incorrect slogan. It appears ever so briefly and is easily missed. Yet it got a good chuckle from the audience.

Speaking of which, I saw THE DEAD DON’T DIE in a full theater in which the majority in the audience were college-aged folks. It was a lively audience that was laughing and having fun even before the movie started. And they were generous with their laughter throughout the movie, laughing much more than I did.

As mentioned, the film breaks the fourth wall on more than one occasion, sequences where Murray and Driver discuss the theme song and even the script. But it’s not the type of lively screenplay that is filled with playful asides a la the works of Woody Allen or Mel Brooks. In fact, there is very little that is lively about the entire movie. There’s about as much energy surrounding this flick as a heavy-duty afternoon nap.

There are also some fun little in-jokes, like Adam Driver carrying a STAR WARS key chain, a direct nod to his role in the new STAR WARS trilogy.

A lot of the humor doesn’t work. The running gag about the theme song wasn’t funny at the beginning and it’s even less funny by the end.

There’s a GREAT GATSBY gaffe that I’m still not sure I understand. A character mentions she loves the name Zelda because of Zelda Fitzgerald, who she says was Jay Gatsby’s wife in THE GREAT GATSBY, but Gatsby wasn’t married, and his love interest in the novel was Daisy Buchanan. Zelda Fitzgerald was the wife of Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s possible I’m missing something here, but since what I’m missing isn’t obvious, such a gaffe just comes off as lazy writing.

Speaking of lazy, there’s a heck of a lot of inaction going on here. Characters stand around and talk, and talk, and talk. There’s one sequence after the first zombie kill in the diner when Chief Robertson discovers the bodies, that features as its gag people saying the same lines when they see the bodies for this first time. Admittedly, this is funny, but it takes place during a sequence where we have to watch each character drive up to the diner, casually take their time entering and exiting before saying the aforementioned line. S-l-o-w.

There are a lot of satirical moments poking fun at today’s society, and most of these work, although they are exceedingly understated.

The horror elements are also downplayed here, and while there are some gory sequences, this one doesn’t really hold its own as a horror movie. There are also scenes of dialogue where the characters in a panic go on about the zombie epidemic, and they go on at lengths which aren’t supported by events in the movie. There’s basically one zombie scene before the film’s third and final act.

There’s also an annoying way the zombie’s die, as when they are killed they give off a puff of smoke. What is this, TWILIGHT?

THE DEAD DON’T DIE does have a terrific cast, which is one of its strengths, and they all play quirky characters.

Bill Murray is fine as Chief Robertson. He certainly has been funnier in his career, but he handles the deadpan humor well, again channeling a Bob Newhart vibe. There’s also an in-joke when his character breaks the fourth wall and asks Adam Driver if they are simply improvising here, since Murray began his career with improv, and is known to have improvised in some of his movies. Then again, maybe it simply means that Murray and Driver weren’t working with a script!

Adam Driver also nails the deadpan humor as Officer Peterson. I increasingly enjoy Driver in the movies, and while his biggest role to date has been the conflicted villain Kylo Ren in the new STAR WARS trilogy, I’ve enjoyed him more in such films as BLACKKKLANSMAN (2018) and LOGAN LUCKY (2017). He was probably my favorite part of THE DEAD DON’T DIE, and he certainly got the most laughs, but he also didn’t have to try very hard. The audience laughed when he showed up at a crime scene driving a miniscule car.

Chloe Sevigny is very good as Officer Morrison, and Tilda Swinton has the most unusual role as local mortician Zelda Winston, who’s an eccentric character whose idiosyncracies sometimes generate laughter and other times misfire. She’s the one character in the film who is a badass zombie killer, which provide Swinton with her best moments in the movie.

Steve Buscemi is on hand as the irritable farmer Frank, and he has a couple of comic moments, but for a guy like Buscemi, that’s less than you expect. The cast also includes Danny Glover, Selena Gomez, Caleb Landry Jones, and Tom Waits as Hermit Bob.

Hermit Bob’s line at the end of the film that we live in a crazy world kinda sums up the point of the film, that this world is a crazy place, and that zombies rising from the dead isn’t any nuttier than things we are already seeing.

As I said, one day this film may be remembered as a classic satire. But today, alas, due to its incredibly slow and lethargic pace and less than sharp writing, it’s going down in my book as a well-intentioned look at the crazy world in which we live that lacked the necessary energy and oomph to successfully make its case.

It also doesn’t help itself in that it’s not much of a zombie movie, a fact that most likely will keep its potential fan base away from the theater.

—END—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLACKKKLANSMAN (2018) – Effective Essay on Race Relations in the U.S.

1
Posted on by

blackkklansman - driver- washington

Adam Driver and John David Washington in Spike Lee’s BLACKKKLANSMAN (2018).

Believe it or not, BLACKKKLANSMAN (2018), Spike Lee’s latest movie which tells the tale of a black Colorado cop who infiltrated the KKK in the 1970s, is based on a true story, chronicled in the memoir Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth in 2014.

But Lee’s BLACKKKLANSMAN is less a bio pic of Ron Stallworth and more an essay about race, and that’s what ultimately makes this all-too-often-over-the-top tale a success. From its opening shot from GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) to its closing news footage of the horrifying events in Charlottesville, Virginia, the film is structured as a treatise on race relations in the United States, and sadly shows that rather than progressing to a better place, we’ve largely stayed the same, or worse, as judging from the emboldened unmasked faces of the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, we may have gone backwards.

It’s 1972, and Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) becomes the first black police officer in Colorado Springs. His dream is to become an undercover detective, and he sets out to do just that as he phones the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and pretends to be a racist white American male. When he’s invited to join the KKK, he arranges for a white officer Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to play him, and the ruse is on.

Together, and with the full support of their superiors, Ron and Flip infiltrate the KKK’s inner circle and move to take down its more prominent members. Their investigation even leads them to the KKK’s grand master, David Duke (Topher Grace).

This in a nutshell is the plot of BLACKKKLANSMAN, but as I said, what’s more important and impressive about this movie is what it has to say about race relations. On that note, there’s a lot to digest.

BLACKKKLANSMAN makes the case that we haven’t gotten anywhere with race relations, that we’ve actually gone backwards. At the height of Ron’s and Flip’s success, late in the movie, they are informed that their unit is being disbanded due to budget cuts, the symbolic meaning being that here was a moment in time when racism was being driven back, and we took our foot off the pedal and allowed it to return unchecked to the point where it is now, as chronicled in the film’s final few minutes with the footage from Charlottesville.

Early on, there’s a speech by a former Black Panther member to a college crowd where he speaks about his childhood love of Tarzan and how he used to root for Tarzan to beat the black Natives, until he realized those Natives were him. This, along with the footage from GONE WITH THE WIND, speaks to how ingrained racism has been in our culture, even in our movies.

Later, in one of the best sequences of the movie, the film jumps back and forth between two events. A speech by Jerome Turner (Harry Belafonte) who recounts in explicit and painful detail his eyewitness account of a brutal lynching of a black boy, watched by a crowd of white onlookers behaving as if they were at a sporting event, is intercut with David Duke and other KKK members watching THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915). This is the closest the film comes to making its audience weep at the horrors of race relations in our country.

One of the things that doesn’t work in BLACKKKLANSMAN is Spike Lee’s lack of subtlety. Too often his in-your-face style backfires with the unintended result of giving credence to the opposite side. Some of the KKK members, for example, seem like walking clichés for what racist people should be like. The same with some of the police officers. The white racist officer, for example, seems to have walked off the set of last year’s THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (2017) as if he’s Sam Rockwell’s Officer Dixon’s long-lost cousin, but with far less realistic results.

The screenplay by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, and Spike Lee, based on the memoir Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth, gets an A for its race relations content but scores far less when it comes to its characterizations and plot points. The characters struggle to remain real and the story doesn’t hit all the right notes. There are times when it feels like an awkward “special” episode of Norman Lear’s ALL IN THE FAMILY (1971-79).

On the other hand, one thing Spike Lee does well is take advantage of our knowledge and feelings of present day issues.  There are several uncomfortable scenes of police brutality, for example, in this story which takes place in 1972, but by and large they pale in comparison to real events which have happened in the here and now, again showing how things are worse here in 2018.

John David Washington, the son of Denzel Washington, is solid as Ron Stallworth, but strangely the character isn’t developed as thoroughly as he should be. We know that he always wanted to be a cop, and that he likewise wanted to fight for his people, but we know this because he says this.  We don’t really see or experience his passion or his pain.

Adam Driver fares better than Washington, and his Flip Zimmerman character is actually better developed than Ron Stallworth. Zimmerman is a Jew who at first doesn’t mind hearing all the KKK’s insults, but later in another of the movie’s better scenes, he tells Ron that the reason he didn’t mind the slurs is that although he is Jewish he wasn’t raised Jewish, and so his heritage meant nothing to him. He just saw himself as an average white American, but after hearing all the KKK members’ derogatory remarks, he says now for the first time in his life he can’t stop thinking about his heritage.

He also has a key scene where he responds to Ron’s question of why he doesn’t do anything about the racist cop in their midst, as he tells Ron that although the cop in question is a bad cop, they won’t do anything about it because they are a family and they must look after their own, to which Ron says “that sounds like another group I know about.”

Two of the better performances belong to the supporting players. I loved Laura Harrier as Patrice Dumars, the college student who leads the black movement on campus and who Ron falls for. Harrier possesses a strength and energy that oddly is missing from both Washington’s and Driver’s characters. The movie picks up in intensity every time she’s on-screen. Harrier was similarly successful in SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (2017).

And Topher Grace is excellent as David Duke. His matter of fact businesslike style showing how Duke tried to intellectualize the KKK and make it mainstream, doing everything in his power to make it more acceptable, is unlike the rest of the movie, subtle and chilling. And when we see the real David Duke in 2017 footage, you can see how well Grace nailed the role.

Some of BLACKKKLANSMAN works. Some of it doesn’t. For example, the conversation where it’s explained that the role of the KKK in the 1970s was to legitimize racism to the point where it’s accepted in U.S. politics in the hope that one day someone with similar views is elected U.S. President, works on the one hand because here in 2018 that appears to be the case, but on the other hand seems too convenient and trite, the perfect ammunition for those arguing the opposite point that such talk is “fake news.”

That being said, I liked BLACKKKLANSMAN a lot, but I didn’t love it. What it has to say about race is absolutely required viewing. We still have a race relations problem in the United States and right now it’s not even close to getting better. But in terms of how it tells its story, I liked it less so.  Its characters struggled to draw me in, its story often seemed too blatant, as if Lee’s emotions about this topic were so strong he couldn’t see to it to tell it through a more nuanced lens, and its comedy rarely struck a chord and drew nary a chuckle.

Strangely, I was more emotionally moved regarding race by Marvel’s BLACK PANTHER (2018) earlier this year.

However, I may be in the minority. The film received a hearty round of applause from its full audience as the end credits rolled.

I do agree, however, that it’s Lee’s best film in years. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a Spike Lee movie that I’ve really liked. You probably have to go all the way back to MALCOLM X (1992).

The strength of BLACKKKLANSMAN is not in its storytelling but in its unabashed openness to look at issues of race. As such, it makes for a highly successful and effective essay on the history of race relations in the United States.

—-END—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Luke Skywalker is Back in Action in STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (2017)

0
Posted on by

starwars_thelastjedi_poster“““““`1

At long last, Luke Skywalker speaks!

As much as I liked STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015),  I was left disappointed by the fact that after characters spent the entire film searching for the elusive Luke Skywalker, he shows up for a mere half-second in the final reel and doesn’t utter a word.

Hey, it’s Luke Skywalker!  Cue end credits.

So, for me, the thing I was most looking forward to about STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (2017), the latest chapter in the STAR WARS saga, was seeing Luke Skywalker back in action. And since he finally gets to speak some dialogue and then some, his presence here was easily my favorite part of the movie.

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI picks up immediately where its predecessor, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015) left off.  And so we find the Resistance fighters led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) battling the evil First Order led by Leia’s and the now deceased Han Solo’s son Ben, who goes by the bad-guy moniker Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).  Yup, you might say the current STAR WARS battles are more of a domestic dispute!

Actually, the villain who is calling the shots is the supremely evil Snoke (Andy Serkis), as Kylo Ren works for him, but any acute viewer can spot the writing on the wall a mile away, that the real villain in this new trilogy is no doubt the conflicted Kylo Ren.

Things are not looking good for our merry band of Resistance fighters.  They are outgunned and outmanned by the superior First Order forces, even with the presence of young new heroes Finn (John Boyega) and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac).

And so it’s up to young Rey (Daisy Ridley) to convince the Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to come out of retirement and help their cause, which is no easy task since Luke is a cranky old man now, disillusioned with the world, and he wants no part in any more of its conflicts.

It takes old friend R2D2 to point out that years earlier it was another old Jedi who was asked to help the cause, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Kenobi said yes.  And when Luke still hesitates, the spirit of Yoda arrives to set him straight.

In spite of the box office records that STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI is currently setting, the film really is a mixed bag.

For me, the best part of this film was seeing Luke Skywalker back in action on the big screen. His scenes are clearly the best in the movie.

Just as interesting are the scenes with newcomer Rey (Daisy Ridley).  Her scenes with Luke resonate.  As she tries to convince Luke to join the Resistance, she’s also trying to learn more about who she is, and just why it is that the Force is so strong with her.

And as much as I enjoyed Luke in this movie, and most of this is due in large part ot Mark Hamill’s performance, the two most interesting characters in the film are Rey and villain Kylo Ren. As Rey searches for answers to her identity, she becomes increasingly connected to Kylo Ren, as their strength with the Force allows them to communicate with each over vast distances, and each wants to convert the other. Rey wants to turn Kylo Ren from the Dark Side, while Kylo Ren wants Rey to join him in his ambitious plot to pretty much take over the galaxy.

And Kylo Ren is also connected to Luke Skywalker, since Luke had tried to train his nephew years earlier, but failed when Ren turned to the Dark Side.

Kylo Ren is a very interesting character, with some pretty neat conflicts.  He sees himself as the next Darth Vader, but he continually falls short, and part of this is he’s the son of Han Solo and Princess Leia, and their connection is also strong with him.  Yet, to shut them down, he murdered his own father in the last movie, and this time around he promises the same fate to his uncle, Luke Skywalker.

All these parts of the movie work and work well, and the good news is these three characters do make up the bigger portion of this movie.  However, the other stories, the ones involving the Resistance led by Leia, and featuring subplots with Finn and Poe Dameron, pretty much fall flat.  They suffer largely from a “been there, done that” situation. We’ve been down this road before in previous STAR WARS films.

The First Order’s pursuit of the small Resistance fleet which takes up the entire movie is rather boring, and the smaller plot where Finn and Poe try to incapacitate the Rebel ship chasing them is rather redundant and could have appeared in any STAR WARS movie.

I found myself only interested in the story which featured the triangle of Rey, Kylo Ren, and Luke Skywalker.

Written and directed by Rian Johnson, known for his science fiction thriller LOOPER (2012) starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a film I liked a lot, STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI looks as amazing as you would expect.  The special effects are all top-notch, and it does contain some decent scenes.  When Luke and Kylo Ren finally face each other, the moment is up there with some of the most dramatic and memorable scenes in the series.

But running at 152 minutes, making it the longest STAR WARS movie, it does tend to be a bit overlong and does struggle somewhat with the pacing.  Let’s put it this way.  It felt like 152 minutes.

It was great seeing Mark Hamill back on the big screen as Luke Skywalker.  Hamill is a very good actor who has been missed in the movies over the years, as his career took a different path which saw him do more voice-over roles in animated features.  For those of us who grew up watching young Luke Skywalker take on the Death Star and eventually become a Jedi to confront his own father Darth Vader, it’s a special experience to watch him here as an older man once again drawn into another conflict, but this time as the older, wiser force. If there’s any downside here, it’s that the film doesn’t include enough Luke Skywalker.

That being said, both Daisy Ridley as Rey and Adam Driver as Kylo Ren are strong enough performers that they appear more than up to the task to take on the next movie on their own. I like Daisy Ridley a lot, and I enjoyed her here every bit as much as I enjoyed Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker.

I was lukewarm to Adam Driver as Kylo Ren in the previous movie, but he really has grown into the role, and he’s much more of a formidable presence here.  Even better, his inner conflict does not appear forced, and so he’s that rare villain who isn’t just flat-out dark and evil. It’s a neat performance.  He also gets rid of his silly mask in this movie, and that’s definitely a plus.

The rest of the actors are all okay. Of course, Carrie Fisher passed away shortly after filming her scenes for this one.  She’s fine here as Leia, but honestly, the character doesn’t fare as well as Luke Skywalker does in this movie or as Han Solo did in the last.  She’s simply not as interesting a character, nor does she have a whole lot to do in either film.  Still, it was sad to watch her in this film, knowing that in real life, she’s gone, and the character will not appear again.

Both John Boyega as Finn and Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron are fine in their roles, but they’re stuck in storylines that aren’t so interesting.

Andy Serkis is on hand doing what does best, performing as a CGI/motion capture character, this time playing the villain Snoke, and when he’s on-screen he’s sufficiently menacing, but he’s not onscreen all that much.  I enjoyed Kelly Marie Tran as newcomer Rose Tico, who helps Finn here, and it was also fun to see Domhnall Gleeson return as General Hux, who constantly operates in the shadow of the bigger evil villains.

And the amazing John Williams returns once again to score yet another STAR WARS movie, and once more, the music is excellent.

The screenplay by director Johnson is okay.  Again, the Luke/Rey/Kylo Ren arc is the best part, while the rest seems like a rehash of previous STAR WARS movies.

Also, in general, the whole conflict in these “star wars” just isn’t all that interesting.  In fact, it’s pretty darn boring because the writing in these films has never been good enough to spark interest in its larger universe.  The best stories have been the small ones, the conflict between Luke and Darth Vader, Vader’s conflict between the Dark Side and the good, and here the conflicts with Rey, Kylo Ren, and Luke.

Whenever the stories revert to the larger conflict at hand, which is what a lot of the second trilogy did and is largely why those three films were so lifeless, the tales fall flat. I don’t really care about the Rebellion, or the Resistance, or the politics of these worlds because, again, the writing has never been good enough to make me care.

So, every time characters and events in STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI dealt with the ongoing conflict between the First Order and the Resistance, I yawned, but when it focused on the very specific conflicts between Rey, Kylo Ren, and Luke Skywalker, I was all in.

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI will not be the last STAR WARS movie, but with Rey and Kylo Ren poised as the future of the STAR WARS universe, it may be the last one to look so keenly on its past.

—END—

 

Books by Michael Arruda:

TIME FRAME,  science fiction novel by Michael Arruda.  

Ebook version:  $2.99. Available at http://www.neconebooks.com. Print version:  $18.00.  Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.

IN THE SPOOKLIGHT, movie review collection by Michael Arruda.

InTheSpooklight_NewText

 Ebook version:  $4.99.  Available at http://www.neconebooks.com.  Print version:  $18.00.  Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.

FOR THE LOVE OF HORROR, short story collection by Michael Arruda.  

For The Love Of Horror cover

Ebook version:  $4.99.  Available at http://www.neconebooks.com. Print version:  $18.00.  Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.