Review: Life of the Party (2018)

* * 1/2
Director: Ben Falcone
Starring: Melissa McCarthy

Life of the Party, the latest vehicle for the go for broke talents of Melissa McCarthy, is neither as well put together as the films that McCarthy has made with director Paul Feig, nor as broad and crass as her previous collaborations with Ben Falcone. There's a sweetness to the movie which many of McCarthy's other movies tend to lack until until their third acts, and it's pretty funny even though it must be said that it has a pretty simple premise - after being left by her husband, a woman decides to make over her life, starting by going back to college - and manages to do remarkably little with it. Still, McCarthy is funny and charming and sometimes that's enough.

Review: Isle of Dogs (2018)

* * 1/2
Director: Wes Anderson
Starring: Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, and the Wes Anderson players

I like to think that the title of Wes Anderson's latest film, though it refers literally to the location of much of the film's action, is its first joke. Traditionally, dogs do not fare well in Anderson's films. When they die, their deaths tend to be brutally violent (see The Royal Tenenbaums, see Moonrise Kingdom). When you say this film's title aloud, it sounds like "I love dogs," as in "despite killing fictional pets every chance I get, I'm not a dog hating monster;" and when you watch the film, it starts to feel like it's playing with you a little bit, using your knowledge of the fates of dogs in previous films to tease you at various points with the possibility that some of the canine characters have met with terrible fates, only to reveal it was a fakeout. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but maybe Anderson is having a bit of fun with his audience, making his meta-humor just as offbeat as his regular humor. However, playful as it might be, Isle of Dogs is actually pretty serious stuff and makes for Anderson's most overtly political (for better or worse) film to date.

Review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

* * 1/2
Director: Rian Johnson
Starring: Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher

I don't understand the amount of vitriol that has come from people who think The Last Jedi is the worst movie in the Star Wars franchise (is Attack of the Clones still a movie? Because no movie with the words "Star Wars" attached to it will ever be worse than that), but I have to confess that I also don't understand the amount of love it's received from people who think it's one of the best movies in the Star Wars franchise. It's a perfectly fine movie, one which left me largely entertained while also leaving me with some reservations, one which should not be inspiring people to make Change.org petitions (though whomever started the Porg one is a comedic genius whose time was well spent), but which shouldn't be inspiring people to bend over backwards with praise either. I didn't think it was great, I didn't think it was terrible, and my overall emotional response to it was pretty muted.

Review: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

* * 1/2
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman

"It's a metaphor." Flesh for flesh. He's not saying it's right, necessarily, but it's the only way he can see to balance the books and make them both whole. Yorgos Lanthimos' latest film is built around a long standoff between a teenage boy driven by righteous certainty and a middle-aged man who thinks he can put off the inevitable, with three other lives caught in the middle. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is neither as bonkers as 2009's Dogtooth nor as darkly delightful as last year's The Lobster. In truth it's a little bit of a slog, relentless in its brutality and building little narrative momentum as it puts its characters through the paces of psychological torture. I wouldn't say that I hated it, and I certainly wouldn't say that it isn't a skilled piece of work, but by the time it was finished I was definitely ready for it to be over. If you're going to see it I recommend seeing it cold and knowing as little about the plot as possible, so consider this a spoiler warning.

Review: Seven Sisters (2017)

* * 1/2
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Glenn Close

Seven Sisters, which is also called What Happened to Monday? and might as well have been called "Orphan Black, but less good," is a high-concept science fiction film that takes about an hour to get beyond its concept. The second hour is pretty solidly entertaining as a thriller (albeit one that ends rather softly), but the first can be a bit frustrating, full of unnecessary exposition (the whole film contains unnecessary exposition, but the bulk of it is concentrated in the first half) and overly enamored with the idea of having star Noomi Rapace interact with herself to the power of 7 so that some scenes feel less like they're servicing a story and more like they exist as acting and technical exercises. Sure, it's an impressive feat, but less talk and more action would go a long way.

Review: A Quiet Passion (2017)

* * 1/2
Director: Terence Davies
Starring: Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle

A Quiet Passion is one of those curious cases where the critical reception and the audience reception are so disparate that it almost seems like the two groups saw a different film. This is most apparent in its Rotten Tomatoes score, which earned 92% from critics, but only 50% from audiences. I can understand both positions. I can see how the great central performance from Cynthia Nixon and the film's meticulous craftsmanship would appeal to critics, and I can fully understand how the languid pacing, mannered style, and plotlessness of the film would have little appeal for audiences. At times I found the film quite engaging, but at other times I was honestly a little bored by it, so it's a bit of a mixed bag to be sure.

Review: The Incredible Jessica James (2017)

* * 1/2
Director: James C. Strouse
Starring: Jessica Williams

While Netflix is undoubtedly the king of streaming services, I'm starting to think that Amazon has the stronger edge in terms of content (and not just because Amazon's films are ones that you can actually see in a theater before revisiting online). Netflix probably wins in terms of quantity, but I also feel like that's why it's going to lose in the long run. Netflix's model is one that seems increasingly built on indiscriminate quantity, on acquiring "content" rather than films so that there can always be something new for an audience in constant demand for more new things. I've seen a few of Netflix's original movies and aside from their documentary selection, which is quite strong, my overall reaction has been that the gems are few and far between and the rest of the features tend to be okay at best, with the occasional film that feels like it barely qualifies as a film. The Incredible Jessica James is one of those, a wisp of a thing that feels more like a long pilot for a series than a proper movie. It's saved somewhat by the starburst of charisma that is Jessica Williams, but it's a pretty forgettable endeavor.

Review: My Cousin Rachel (2017)

* * 1/2
Director: Roger Michell
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Sam Claflin

Did she or didn't she? That's the question at the heart of My Cousin Rachel, an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel of the same name. An ambiguous story about a woman who may, but may not, be a fortune hunter of such ruthless determination that even murder is not beyond her, My Cousin Rachel seems like a film that's bound to divide. Fascinating and frustrating in almost equal measure, largely as a result of the airless quality of Roger Michell's direction, it's not a movie that will win over anyone who isn't already inclined to enjoy a handsome period piece. However, if you're a fan of Rachel Weisz (and why wouldn't you be? She's one of the contemporary greats), then this is a must-see because she's truly wonderful here, alternately delightful and sinister, a woman who could conceivably be the vile temptress her reputation suggests or an innocent wrongly accused.

Review: Colossal (2017)

* * 1/2
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis

Nacho Vigalondo's Colossal is the kind of film that I want to praise for its ideas, but which falls just short enough of achieving what it's trying to do that I can't really recommend it. If Colossal was just what it appears to be - an oddity about a woman who realizes that her drunken antics are somehow resulting in a Kaiju appearing in Seoul, stomping through the city and leaving destruction in its wake - then it might have made for a fine absurdist comedy. If its ambitions had been limited to being about a woman confronting and finding a way to conquer her demons, it would probably also have been fine - as the woman in question, Anne Hathaway delivers a performance that is strong and nuanced enough to have pulled that off. But Colossal has greater ambitions than that, and while I admire it for what it's trying to address and what I think it's trying to do, I think it goes about it a little wrong.

Review: The Fate of the Furious

* * 1/2
Director: F. Gary Gray
Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Charlize Theron, Jason Statham

Even when grading on the generous curve you have to allow for the movies from the Fast and Furious series, which aim for nothing more than the simplest entertainment and the most instant of gratifications, the latest entry is just a bit of a disappointment. The Fate of the Furious (how is it not called The F8 of the Furious? Was that too obvious even for this series?) is an over-stuffed entry in a series that was already pretty well-stuffed and which pretty thoroughly disappears up itself by playing around with its mythology rather than continuing to build it out - to say nothing of the fact that its villain is such a non-entity that it almost seems like Charlize Theron just popped by over a weekend to film some scenes for the hell of it. But, still, it's about the action, right? The action is pretty good, though it leaves you wondering where, if each entry in the series is to have bigger action than the last, the series has left to go with the two (at least) films it has planned for the future.

Review: Triple 9 (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: John Hillcoat
Starring: Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Woody Harrelson, Kate Winslet

Since 1995, all heist movies have existed in the long shadow of Heat, Michael Mann's defining word on the genre. Every once in a while there will be a film like The Town, which struck a deep enough chord to stand somewhat apart, but that's the exception, rather than the rule. Most of the films that have followed Heat have to be content with paling in comparison and John Hillcoat's Triple 9 is no different. A heist movie centering on dirty cops and the Russian mob, Triple 9 features a lot of really good actors playing some pretty stock characters, making for a film that's fairly entertaining most of the time, but ultimately a forgettable entry in the filmographies of all involved. Rarely has such a great cast been assembled for a such a deeply okay movie.

Review: War Dogs (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: Todd Phillips
Starring: Miles Teller, Jonah Hill

When Bertolt Brecht wrote "Mother Courage and Her Children," it was his intention that the main character would be seen in a negative light. She's a war profiteer and he wanted the audience to come away thinking her morally reprehensible. Instead, the audience found her sympathetic. Where he saw a "hyena of the battlefield" making her living off of the suffering of others, they saw a survivor who did what she had to do. He rewrote the play and made her worse, but it did nothing to shake the audience's alignment with her. The European audiences of the 1940s, having endured the relentless upheaval of WWII, saw her as something of a victim of circumstance, someone whose actions might not have been admirable, but whose drive to endure was. In the same vein, some might view the story of David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli less as a story of two people trying to cash in on the chaos of the Iraq War and who, through their participation, bear some moral responsibility for the lives lost and people displaced, and more as a story that glamorizes an element of war by showing how it allowed them to attain all the most desired trappings of Bro culture. War Dogs is a pretty shallow movie that pretty much does exactly what it's trying to criticize, yet it's not without its charms - which is the problem. A story like this shouldn't feel like so much fun.

Review: Bad Moms (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
Starring: Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Bell, Christina Applegate

A movie like Bad Moms is proof through absence of the value of women in the writer's room, at least when it comes to projects that are about women. Because while it's funny enough and wants very badly to be (and thinks that it is) sympathetic to the plight of "the other," Bad Moms ends up giving itself a lot of credit for insights that it doesn't actually possess. The point it wants to make is that society places an impossible burden on mothers by creating unachievable standards for motherhood, but I'm not sure that writers/directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore really understand why that's a point that needs to be made. Bad Moms is funny in the way that a lot of raucous comedies are funny, with a lot of the laughs coming from the "... did they just say/do that?" school of shock humor, but it's not so funny that it covers up the fact that Lucas and Moore don't know how to resolve the plot they've set into motion because they don't really understand the issue they're trying to address.

Review: The Girl on the Train (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: Tate Taylor
Starring: Emily Blunt

Back in the day, when the "erotic thriller" was a staple of Hollywood's annual output, there was many a story that turned on "crazy bitches" and the poor men whose errant libidos placed them in those women's sights. In those narratives the woman, who appears at first attractive and sexually available and then reveals herself to be violently unstable, becomes a thorn in the side of a good man who made a mistake and who is redeemed for his misdeeds by being targeted by the woman, while the woman is typically punished with death. In these stories the woman is always crazy, her wrath unprovoked, the man a victim. The Girl on the Train is a story told from the point of view of the "crazy bitch," who maybe isn't so crazy, whose wrath maybe isn't so unprovoked, whose "victims" maybe aren't so innocent after all. If only the movie were a little bit better, this would make for a refreshing change of pace. But, hey, great performance from Emily Blunt nevertheless.

Review: Central Intelligence (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Starring: Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson

Central Intelligence looks like it was a lot of fun to make. I'm not sure it's ever quite as much fun to watch, but I'm glad that some millionaires got to have a good time. Though the film is sometimes quite funny, it's also strangely inert given the high volume of action sequences spread throughout, and it inspired nothing more in me than indifference. Though indifference is probably better than massive disappointment, which is what I would have felt had I realized beforehand that its director, Rawson Marshall Thurber, is also the director of Dodgeball, a movie as silly as it is funny and had the benefit of Vince Vaughan at the height of his powers. Central Intelligence has the benefit of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart at the height of their powers, but somehow never makes as much of them as it could. Maybe next time will be better, and there certainly will be a next time given that Central Intelligence made a whole lot of money during the summer when just about nothing seemed to make quite enough money.

Netflix Recommends... Legend (2015)

* * 1/2
Director: Brian Helgeland
Starring: Tom Hardy

Several years ago now, there was a screenplay floating around written by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris that offered a fresh take on the legend of Robin Hood and it had a lot of people excited. Taking the Sheriff of Nottingham as its protagonist and turning the tale into a detective story in which Nottingham investigated the crimes of Robin Hood, it was a take that flipped the narrative and turned something familiar into something new and different. The script sold on the basis that it could give audiences something that they hadn't already seen, but somewhere between buying the project and producing it, the studio did what studios pretty much always do: they panicked. An unknown product might excite people and find an audience, but it terrifies Hollywood because if something hasn't been seen before, there's no way to predict how well it might do and what size of an audience it might find. So instead of "Nottingham," we ended up with another Robin Hood movie - "grittier," more "historical" - instead. I couldn't help but think of that as I sat reflecting on Legend, a film which I suspect won the opportunity to be made on the basis that it could offer a take on a story that we've already seen (more or less) a hundred times that was different enough to seem new, only to lose courage and become something more rote and familiar instead.

Review: Keanu (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: Peter Atencio
Starring: Jordan Peele, Keegan-Michael Key

Of the two major motion pictures about cats to come out in the last few months (the other, of course, being the "what-the-fuck-even-is-this" Nine Lives), Keanu is clearly the better choice. I mean, he only gets a celebrity voiceover for a brief moment during the course of his film, but that kitten is cute as hell. I totally get why everyone in this movie is willing to put their lives at risk in order to claim him as their own. If you're a fan of the now sadly defunct Key & Peele, then there will be a lot in Keanu that you'll enjoy. You might enjoy it more as a slightly longer than average sketch, rather than a full length feature, though. The premise of the film is pretty thin, even for a relatively short feature, and as a result the story tends to sag in places, but overall it's funny enough for a silly little diversion of a film.

Review: Now You See Me 2 (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: Jon M. Chu
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Lizzy Caplan

The world probably didn't need a sequel to the 2013 heist by way of magic film Now You See Me, but it made $117 million at the domestic box office so we get one anyway. Never mind that part of the reason the original made as much as it did was surely that it was something new and different, which could go a ways to explaining why the follow-up is finding considerably less success, dismissed by audiences as just another drop in this summer's ocean of sequels. Whether the sequel is actually more worthy of success than the original is difficult for me to say, because as I was watching this one, which continues the story set up by the first and is always referring back to it, I became increasingly aware of how little I remembered the first one. To me, this movie might as well have been called Now You See Me: Or Do You?, as I suspect that it will have more or less the same lasting impact on me that the first one did.

Review: High-Rise (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: Ben Wheatley
Starring: Tom Hiddleston

Ben Wheatley's take on J.G. Ballard's High-Rise comes so very close to working that it's tempting to suggest that he just take it back, tweak it some more, and try again. But that's not how it works, and the film is what is it, which is a stylishly crafted and executed piece that is visually engaging and even, at times, daring, but which never offers much more than a surface perspective on its allegorical tale of income disparity and social inequity. It gets off to a good enough start, leading with the dark humor and element of the grotesque that will define so much of what is about to unfold, but somewhere around the middle it starts to sag, its storytelling style leaving its lack of depth exposed, and by the end it actually starts to feel a bit tiresome. There are a number of great images and individual scenes and moments in High-Rise, but taken as a whole it ultimately doesn't amount to very much.

Netflix Recommends... About Last Night (2014)

* * 1/2
Director: Steve Pink
Starring: Michael Ealy, Joy Bryant, Kevin Hart, Regina Hall

It's sort of hard to reconcile how a movie that is only cynical and hard-edged in the most sanitized and palatable way (not to mention only sporadically clever) has its roots in a play by David Mamet. About Last Night is David Mamet with all the David Mamet excised, which is sort of surprising given that the film was adapted by Leslye Headland, writer/director of Bachelorette, a vicious little comedy from 2012. That said, About Last Night isn't a bad movie. It's not great, either, it's just sort of your average romantic comedy with a pair of pleasant but bland leads, each of whom has a colorful sidekick to keep things interesting and the energy up. It isn't ground breaking stuff (unless you consider a film with an all black cast groundbreaking, which, considering the current climate, maybe it is), but it's pretty okay.