Movie Reviews, Feburary 2019
Titles Covered: Searching, Crazy Rich Asians, Bohemian Rhapsody, Mary Poppins Returns, The House with a Clock in its Walls, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Bee Movie, Gigi, and On Golden Pond.
Searching (****)
Searching is the best 2018 movie that you probably never heard about.
The film uses an oddball approach to film-making by presenting the entire story on computer and smartphone screens. Essentially, this is an update of the “found footage” concept, but also replaces common tropes with their digital counterparts. Instead of seeing a physical calendar to denote the passing of time, you see a Google calendar. Instead of seeing a detective sort through papers, they sort through files and search results. I’m aware that this doesn’t sound very compelling, but Searching does such an astounding job with the editing and compositing that it manages to tell a very effective story without every breaking away to the real world. The first 10 minutes of the movie actually reminded me of the famously emotional beginning to the movie Up, using computer activities to stand in for a traditional montage. I don’t want this style to become a trend, but I was in disbelief at how well it was used here.
And then there’s the story. A lot of twist/thriller movies succeed marvelously at raising curiosity, but fail to deliver when it comes time to explain everything. I’ve seen many, many movies in which the mysterious 3rd-act closure was underwhelming (Mystic River, Contact, Annihilation, Skyfall, Cube, Dark Knight Returns, most of the Mission Impossibles, etc., etc., etc.) or just stupidly far-fetched (Now You See Me, Get Out, Interstellar). Miraculously, Searching actually fully delivers, with a tight storyline in which even the red herrings are revealing, bizarre plot points are clues, everything matters, and the whole movie ties up with a story that feels very unusual and out of the ordinary without breaking credibility. Bravo.
Searching is easily one of the best movies of 2018, and is a unique “must-see” experience. It’s a very innovative thriller, a great role for John Cho, and an insightful look at how social media records and distorts our lives.
Crazy Rich Asians (***)
This pretty-good comedy is perhaps less interesting than how it was marketed…
Anyone knowledgeable movie nut knows that India and China have extremely prolific film industries. In recent years, Chinese movies have been seeing crazy rich box office returns, despite limited marketing and distribution in North America. Hence, Americans who don’t know much about movies are under the impression that there are no movies with Asian casts. Thus, Crazy Rich Asians was successfully marketed in America as being a “rare” movie with an Asian cast, while Chinese moviegoers didn’t seem to care about the movie at all. Meanwhile, poor Searching somehow got no attention…
Anyway, Crazy Rich Asians is really less about Asians and more about people who are crazy rich. The irrelevant prologue scene is the only one with any racial issues. The plot concerns a young woman who goes to meet her boyfriend’s family, unaware that he is super-rich and famous in his home country. Huh, it occurs to me that this could have been the premise for a sequel to Coming to America.
The comedy of the movie centers around awkward “meeting the family” interactions, as the main character is introduced to disapproving parents, quirky cousins, and obnoxious family friends. The supporting characters eventually get so numerous that even the viewer feels lost and confused in the chaos. And of course, these crazy rich people are often detached from reality and go on excursions to bizarrely extravagant events, at one point even taking a fleet of helicopters out to a wild bachelor party atop a cargo ship.
So, this movie actually isn’t too far out of the ordinary. It’s a fish out of water comedy about rich weirdos and families confronting their differences. It’s pretty good. I laughed a few times, but not a lot. And a few of the dramatic bits actually worked, especially a scene in which an adulterous husband explains his frustrations. Overall, not a great movie, but a pretty solid comedy.
Bohemian Rhapsody (** and a half)
It’s a musician biopic.
It’s a serviceable musician biopic, I guess, but that’s all it is. It’s the story of someone famous who was popular, and they sang some songs. Aside from Amadeus and maybe Straight Outta Compton, I’m not sure that these movies have ever been interesting. But my wife is a huge fan of the band Queen, so I figured we’d check out the highest-grossing musician bio-pic of all time.
I'm going to be that contrarian again:, Bohemian Rhapsody is not a particularly good movie. Sure, it does some spot-on re-creations of 70’s and 80’s era Queen, but it doesn’t tell a story. The movie has no insights into what their music means (to either the band, or the fans), and not much to say about the performers themselves. The only one who gets any development is Freddie Mercury, who is portrayed as such a shallow narcissist that I disliked him from beginning to end. About half-way through, I asked my wife, “Was Freddie Mercury really this obnoxious?” Seriously, he acts like a spoiled child throughout the whole movie. That’s not an interesting character, let alone one worth rooting for.
I will acknowledge some good bits that keep the movie watchable. The soundtrack is good, and it is sometimes interesting to watch how Queen’s experimental styles were actually recorded. The actors are pretty spot-on in their imitations of the original band-members, including a nearly unrecognizable Joseph Mezzalo as their famously soft-spoken bassist and Gwilym Lee as a carbon copy of astrophysicist Brian May. And the movie is a slick production with a pretty exciting climax at the Live Aid Concert. The film neglects to mention the controversial legacy of Live Aid (which was honestly all I knew about it), but maybe that’s beside the point.
Despite its good points, I’m baffled that anyone considers Bohemian Rhapsody one of the best films of the year. Pop stars are not intrinsically interesting people, and if you’re going to argue that they are, you need a better story than this. “Four guys wrote some catchy tunes, and one of them was gay” is not a story!
Mary Poppins Returns (***)
About half-way through this sequel to the classic Mary Poppins, I was reminded of The Force Awakens.
Let me explain: while both Mary Poppins Returns and The Force Awakens are technically sequels, they bear such similarity to their predecessors that they are virtual remakes. It’s pretty obvious when most of the major musical numbers are replacements for famous scenes from the original movie. By the time Bert Jack is leading a tap-dancing gang of Sweeps Lamplighters in a rousing number of “Step in Time” “Trip a Little Light Fantastic,” Mary Poppins Returns has gone into full remake mode.
Oh look, there I go again! Being that grumpy critic who hates everything popular!
Actually, I enjoyed Mary Poppins Returns a decent amount. There’s a lot to like. Emily Blunt does a great take as the title character, Ben Wishaw is full of heart and emotion as adult Michael Banks, and the 3 child actors are practically perfect. And there are 2 surprise cameos near the end that are pretty magical. Mary Poppins Returns is certainly a very gorgeous movie, with excellent sets, cinematography, and costumes (special mention to the costumes in the animated world). It definitely uses modern-day special effects to surpass the visuals of the original movie. “Can You Imagine That?” is probably my favorite musical number, as it goes far beyond what would have been possible in the 1960’s.
Those are the hits, but there are a few misses. The nadir is probably “A Cover is Not the Book” which turns Ms. Poppins into a silly vaudeville performer while having Lin-Manuel Miranda jam out overly-complicated verses to teach simplistic lessons that end up not mattering to the story. Also, Meryl Streep’s turn as Cousin Topsy (the replacement for Uncle Albert) is pointless and never reaches the anarchic heights that her song lyrics suggest (Mugging for the camera is “topsy turvy”? Whoa there, Meryl!). Frankly, I would have cut the whole scene.
The film is also somewhat mixed on the issue of motherhood. On one hand, the film does give reverence to Michael’s late wife, whom he remembers in a sad and simple song (a beautiful moment that actually doesn’t copy the original movie). This is a compelling angle, but one that deserved more gravity. Frankly, it would have been a more challenging and interesting story if Mary Poppins actually had to realize that grief can’t be resolved with a comforting song from a magical nanny. This could have deepened her character a lot. Also, Adult-Jane feels shoe-horned in as a replacement for Winnifred Banks (the mother in the first movie).
(As an aside, obvious moral and intellectual failings should NOT be papered over with fantastical ability. Mary Poppins doesn’t hit this problem as badly as Willy Wonka or Freddie Mercury, but still could use some development once in a while.)
On the balance, I recommend Mary Poppins Returns for its heart, strong visuals, and entertaining musical numbers. It doesn’t reach the heights that the Sherman Brothers reached in the 1960s, but then again, what does?
The House with a Clock in Its Walls (*** and a half)
Many critics have noted that horror movies have been actually good lately. Some of that has been thanks to horror movies that are actually about something: Babadook was a metaphor for lasting grief, A Quiet Place was story about parental fears, and even the first half of Get Out worked as a commentary on tokenism. There is another tactic that has worked well for movies like Goosebumps and Insidious: don’t make your movie R-rated and gory. Seriously, you don’t need to do that. There’s an inverse relationship between the quality of a horror movie and the body-count (https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/the-higher-the-body-count-the-worse-the-horror-movie/), and shooting for a younger audience forces the film-maker to get creative with their scares.
That brings me to The House with a Clock in its Walls, a mild success from last year and the first Eli Roth movie that’s interested me. The infamous gore-master presents a humorous and zany take on horror with this period piece about an orphan boy who goes to live with his quirky warlock uncle. The story combines a lot of classic children’s literature tropes with a fantasy-horror storyline and ends up just being straight-up fun.
The stars of the show are Jack Black and Cate Blanchett as a platonic pair of bickering magicians. Unlike the over-powered mages in “Harry Potter,” these two struggle to produce magic beyond the parlor-trick level, and thus need a boy’s help to solve the mystery of a secret doomsday device hidden by a dark wizard. The plot is pretty simple, but it’s helped along by the charismatic performances, entertaining Halloween imagery, and sense of humor. The setting of the haunted house is particularly inspired, and looks like a cross between the Resident Evil Mansion and Pee Wee’s Playhouse. The music is a bit generic, though.
The House with a Clock in its Walls might just be Goosebumps 2.0, but what it does, it does very well.
Mission Impossible: Fallout (*** and a half)
Has it really been 23 years since “Mission: Impossible” was rebooted as a movie series starring Tom Cruise?
It’s impressive that these movies have continued for so long without ever wearing out their welcome. Yet… I can’t shake the feeling that they never reached their full potential. What is “Mission: Impossible” even about? Can you remember the plots of any Mission Impossible story aside from the original Brian DePalma movie? There’s a terrorist or ex-spy or whatever, and they have a bomb/virus/something and Tom Cruise needs to save the day? Anyway, that’s pretty much the plot of Mission Impossible Fallout, and there isn’t really any motivation for much of what happens. It’s just a bunch of extraneous players and “gotcha!” moments designed to make the story seem way more complicated than it actually is.
Despite that… yes, this movie is actually quite enjoyable. It’s stylish, it’s exciting, it’s nail-biting, and some the action scenes are REALLY good. The big new addition to the cast is Henry Cavill, who is actually pretty damn great. I never cared much for his interpretation of Superman, but he’s very intimidating and effective in Mission: Impossible (and yes, the mustache helps!). The action scenes famously used real stunts whenever possible. Tom Cruise actually had to learn to skydive so that a HALO jump could be filmed in real life, and he later broke his leg doing parkour stunts across London (costing the studio’s insurers tens of millions). The action looks great, and it looks real.
But… is there anything of substance? Well… a little. Again, the plot is a typical terrorist yarn tied in a deceptively simply knot, but there are some scenes that actually give Ethan Hunt solid character development. In particular, the re-introduction of Mrs. Hunt proves surprisingly poignant, as well as the explanation for why the couple split up between MI:III and Ghost Protocol.
In short, great action scenes and stunt work plus a few genuinely moving scenes make up for a cliché spy-thriller plot. “Fallout” is certainly better than “Rogue Nation,” but doesn’t take the series to a higher level. If you’ve enjoyed the previous ones, you’ll know what to expect.
Bee Movie (**)
I’ve heard people refer to Bee Movie as the worst animated Dreamworks movie (with the possible exception of Shark Tale), and I was curious…
Bee Movie starts out with a worker bee who isn’t sure if he wants to be a worker like his father, and instead wants to fly outside with the “pollen jocks” (which is a stupid name, BTW). That’s a very cliché family movie premise, but it works. And then, the bee gets a human girlfriend and decides to sue the human race for stealing bee honey. Even putting aside the interspecies sorta-romance, this is a dumb plot, but I could see it working as a Jerry Seinfeld standup routine:
“You ever think about the poor bees that make our honey? Don’t get me wrong, I love honey, but… We definitely aren’t paying those bees minimum wage. And then we put their honey in bear jars? Bears don’t make honey. Bees make honey. Bears kill the bees that make honey!”
I could see this being funny in the more abstract context of a standup monologue. In the context of a story, in which Jerry Seinfeld actually plays a sentient bee suing the human race over honey production, it’s something else entirely. It’s not just absurd observational humor, because there’s a story we’re supposed to be invested in. But… the story is too stupid to take seriously at all. And even if the stupider bits were removed, I’d question the value of an eco-fable that mishandles the most basic facts about bees and pollination. Should we really be teaching kids such bad science, all while making them hate the honey industry?
You might ask, “well, is this worse than A Bug’s Life?” True, Pixar did depict white-pigmented ants with 4 limbs, but that was a visual choice. It wasn’t important to the story, let alone the moral of the story.
Is it unfair to focus this entire review on the stupid plot? Maybe, but there isn’t that much to say about the rest of the movie. The rest of the movie is OK. Some parts are funny, and some of the “bee’s eye” visuals are compelling, especially in the early flight sequences. So Bee Movie is not a complete waste of time, but it’s definitely a very weak entry in the Dreamworks canon.
Gigi (*** and a half)
I first heard about this movie as a late-night show joke in the early 2000’s. Ben Affleck had just starred in Gigli, which was quickly panned as the worst movie ever. Thus, the joke was that the only people who paid to see Gigli had mistaken it for the classic musical Gigi.
Gigi is a musical from Lerner and Loewe, the team that hit it big with shows like My Fair Lady and Brigadoon. Gigi is a show in a very similar musical style, and is probably best known for the song “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” It’s a charming show with a lot of the same virtues as most mid-20th-century movie musicals: beautiful Technicolor, decent humor, stylish costumes, and pleasant musical numbers. The plot (which is secondary to the music) concerns a bored wealthy Parisian named Gaston who tires of his usual routine and instead seeks companionship with some quirky lower-class family friends, including an outspoken teenage girl named “Gigi.” You can probably guess where this story goes.
A strange aspect of Gigi is the sub-culture it’s supposed to be about, which I frankly didn’t understand, didn’t like, and wasn’t even sure was a real thing. Gigi is trained in being very proper, not so that she can get a rich husband (which would make sense), but so she can be the temporary mistress of a rich man for all the tabloids to write about. Do people actually intend that as a career option? This isn’t some incidental plot detail; it’s actually key to the conflict, and makes no sense at all. Is this some weird, forgotten subculture, or a satire that’s lost on modern audiences? Since the movie doesn’t explain any of this, it immediately dates the story.
Gigi is a fun, well-done musical that mostly gets marked down for poor subject matter. The premise doesn’t hold up, but the execution is classic Lerner and Loewe theatrical fun.
On Golden Pond (***)
I planned on auditioning for the play On Golden Pond later in the year, and so decided to check out the movie version.
On Golden Pond is basically a story about getting old. The main character, Norman Thayer, is starting to lose his memory, and maintains enough awareness of his mental degradation to be freaked out by this. To hide his tragic deterioration, Norman takes on a sarcastic curmudgeonly persona that distances himself from his adult daughter. The story is a relatively low-key plot in which the decaying old man rediscovers some of his youthful enthusiasm by teaching a teen boy how to fish.
The two leads are played by legendary actors Henry Fonda and Catherine Hepburn, and their charming and nuanced portrayals remind us why we like these actors in the first place. They give subtle performances, without a lot of showing off, and I appreciate that. The same can be said for the two awkward younger men, in the roles I’ll be auditioning for.
There are two obvious flaws of the movie, however. First of all, it’s one of those “based on a play” movies that is very obviously based on a play. There are a decent number of extra scenes to make use of the medium (i.e. this isn’t Fences, which might as well have been a filmed play), but it’s still pretty clear from that the story is meant to convey the intimate dialogue-driven experience of live theater. Second, Jane Fonda is honestly pretty bad in the movie, sporting a weird-looking tan and a lot of overacting. Her character almost comes off as bipolar.
On Golden Pond is cute, endearing, and actually pretty emotional towards the end. But it’s probably not very many people’s favorite movie.
Searching (****)
Searching is the best 2018 movie that you probably never heard about.
The film uses an oddball approach to film-making by presenting the entire story on computer and smartphone screens. Essentially, this is an update of the “found footage” concept, but also replaces common tropes with their digital counterparts. Instead of seeing a physical calendar to denote the passing of time, you see a Google calendar. Instead of seeing a detective sort through papers, they sort through files and search results. I’m aware that this doesn’t sound very compelling, but Searching does such an astounding job with the editing and compositing that it manages to tell a very effective story without every breaking away to the real world. The first 10 minutes of the movie actually reminded me of the famously emotional beginning to the movie Up, using computer activities to stand in for a traditional montage. I don’t want this style to become a trend, but I was in disbelief at how well it was used here.
And then there’s the story. A lot of twist/thriller movies succeed marvelously at raising curiosity, but fail to deliver when it comes time to explain everything. I’ve seen many, many movies in which the mysterious 3rd-act closure was underwhelming (Mystic River, Contact, Annihilation, Skyfall, Cube, Dark Knight Returns, most of the Mission Impossibles, etc., etc., etc.) or just stupidly far-fetched (Now You See Me, Get Out, Interstellar). Miraculously, Searching actually fully delivers, with a tight storyline in which even the red herrings are revealing, bizarre plot points are clues, everything matters, and the whole movie ties up with a story that feels very unusual and out of the ordinary without breaking credibility. Bravo.
Searching is easily one of the best movies of 2018, and is a unique “must-see” experience. It’s a very innovative thriller, a great role for John Cho, and an insightful look at how social media records and distorts our lives.
Crazy Rich Asians (***)
This pretty-good comedy is perhaps less interesting than how it was marketed…
Anyone knowledgeable movie nut knows that India and China have extremely prolific film industries. In recent years, Chinese movies have been seeing crazy rich box office returns, despite limited marketing and distribution in North America. Hence, Americans who don’t know much about movies are under the impression that there are no movies with Asian casts. Thus, Crazy Rich Asians was successfully marketed in America as being a “rare” movie with an Asian cast, while Chinese moviegoers didn’t seem to care about the movie at all. Meanwhile, poor Searching somehow got no attention…
Anyway, Crazy Rich Asians is really less about Asians and more about people who are crazy rich. The irrelevant prologue scene is the only one with any racial issues. The plot concerns a young woman who goes to meet her boyfriend’s family, unaware that he is super-rich and famous in his home country. Huh, it occurs to me that this could have been the premise for a sequel to Coming to America.
The comedy of the movie centers around awkward “meeting the family” interactions, as the main character is introduced to disapproving parents, quirky cousins, and obnoxious family friends. The supporting characters eventually get so numerous that even the viewer feels lost and confused in the chaos. And of course, these crazy rich people are often detached from reality and go on excursions to bizarrely extravagant events, at one point even taking a fleet of helicopters out to a wild bachelor party atop a cargo ship.
So, this movie actually isn’t too far out of the ordinary. It’s a fish out of water comedy about rich weirdos and families confronting their differences. It’s pretty good. I laughed a few times, but not a lot. And a few of the dramatic bits actually worked, especially a scene in which an adulterous husband explains his frustrations. Overall, not a great movie, but a pretty solid comedy.
Bohemian Rhapsody (** and a half)
It’s a musician biopic.
It’s a serviceable musician biopic, I guess, but that’s all it is. It’s the story of someone famous who was popular, and they sang some songs. Aside from Amadeus and maybe Straight Outta Compton, I’m not sure that these movies have ever been interesting. But my wife is a huge fan of the band Queen, so I figured we’d check out the highest-grossing musician bio-pic of all time.
I'm going to be that contrarian again:, Bohemian Rhapsody is not a particularly good movie. Sure, it does some spot-on re-creations of 70’s and 80’s era Queen, but it doesn’t tell a story. The movie has no insights into what their music means (to either the band, or the fans), and not much to say about the performers themselves. The only one who gets any development is Freddie Mercury, who is portrayed as such a shallow narcissist that I disliked him from beginning to end. About half-way through, I asked my wife, “Was Freddie Mercury really this obnoxious?” Seriously, he acts like a spoiled child throughout the whole movie. That’s not an interesting character, let alone one worth rooting for.
I will acknowledge some good bits that keep the movie watchable. The soundtrack is good, and it is sometimes interesting to watch how Queen’s experimental styles were actually recorded. The actors are pretty spot-on in their imitations of the original band-members, including a nearly unrecognizable Joseph Mezzalo as their famously soft-spoken bassist and Gwilym Lee as a carbon copy of astrophysicist Brian May. And the movie is a slick production with a pretty exciting climax at the Live Aid Concert. The film neglects to mention the controversial legacy of Live Aid (which was honestly all I knew about it), but maybe that’s beside the point.
Despite its good points, I’m baffled that anyone considers Bohemian Rhapsody one of the best films of the year. Pop stars are not intrinsically interesting people, and if you’re going to argue that they are, you need a better story than this. “Four guys wrote some catchy tunes, and one of them was gay” is not a story!
Mary Poppins Returns (***)
About half-way through this sequel to the classic Mary Poppins, I was reminded of The Force Awakens.
Let me explain: while both Mary Poppins Returns and The Force Awakens are technically sequels, they bear such similarity to their predecessors that they are virtual remakes. It’s pretty obvious when most of the major musical numbers are replacements for famous scenes from the original movie. By the time Bert Jack is leading a tap-dancing gang of Sweeps Lamplighters in a rousing number of “Step in Time” “Trip a Little Light Fantastic,” Mary Poppins Returns has gone into full remake mode.
Oh look, there I go again! Being that grumpy critic who hates everything popular!
Actually, I enjoyed Mary Poppins Returns a decent amount. There’s a lot to like. Emily Blunt does a great take as the title character, Ben Wishaw is full of heart and emotion as adult Michael Banks, and the 3 child actors are practically perfect. And there are 2 surprise cameos near the end that are pretty magical. Mary Poppins Returns is certainly a very gorgeous movie, with excellent sets, cinematography, and costumes (special mention to the costumes in the animated world). It definitely uses modern-day special effects to surpass the visuals of the original movie. “Can You Imagine That?” is probably my favorite musical number, as it goes far beyond what would have been possible in the 1960’s.
Those are the hits, but there are a few misses. The nadir is probably “A Cover is Not the Book” which turns Ms. Poppins into a silly vaudeville performer while having Lin-Manuel Miranda jam out overly-complicated verses to teach simplistic lessons that end up not mattering to the story. Also, Meryl Streep’s turn as Cousin Topsy (the replacement for Uncle Albert) is pointless and never reaches the anarchic heights that her song lyrics suggest (Mugging for the camera is “topsy turvy”? Whoa there, Meryl!). Frankly, I would have cut the whole scene.
The film is also somewhat mixed on the issue of motherhood. On one hand, the film does give reverence to Michael’s late wife, whom he remembers in a sad and simple song (a beautiful moment that actually doesn’t copy the original movie). This is a compelling angle, but one that deserved more gravity. Frankly, it would have been a more challenging and interesting story if Mary Poppins actually had to realize that grief can’t be resolved with a comforting song from a magical nanny. This could have deepened her character a lot. Also, Adult-Jane feels shoe-horned in as a replacement for Winnifred Banks (the mother in the first movie).
(As an aside, obvious moral and intellectual failings should NOT be papered over with fantastical ability. Mary Poppins doesn’t hit this problem as badly as Willy Wonka or Freddie Mercury, but still could use some development once in a while.)
On the balance, I recommend Mary Poppins Returns for its heart, strong visuals, and entertaining musical numbers. It doesn’t reach the heights that the Sherman Brothers reached in the 1960s, but then again, what does?
The House with a Clock in Its Walls (*** and a half)
Many critics have noted that horror movies have been actually good lately. Some of that has been thanks to horror movies that are actually about something: Babadook was a metaphor for lasting grief, A Quiet Place was story about parental fears, and even the first half of Get Out worked as a commentary on tokenism. There is another tactic that has worked well for movies like Goosebumps and Insidious: don’t make your movie R-rated and gory. Seriously, you don’t need to do that. There’s an inverse relationship between the quality of a horror movie and the body-count (https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/the-higher-the-body-count-the-worse-the-horror-movie/), and shooting for a younger audience forces the film-maker to get creative with their scares.
That brings me to The House with a Clock in its Walls, a mild success from last year and the first Eli Roth movie that’s interested me. The infamous gore-master presents a humorous and zany take on horror with this period piece about an orphan boy who goes to live with his quirky warlock uncle. The story combines a lot of classic children’s literature tropes with a fantasy-horror storyline and ends up just being straight-up fun.
The stars of the show are Jack Black and Cate Blanchett as a platonic pair of bickering magicians. Unlike the over-powered mages in “Harry Potter,” these two struggle to produce magic beyond the parlor-trick level, and thus need a boy’s help to solve the mystery of a secret doomsday device hidden by a dark wizard. The plot is pretty simple, but it’s helped along by the charismatic performances, entertaining Halloween imagery, and sense of humor. The setting of the haunted house is particularly inspired, and looks like a cross between the Resident Evil Mansion and Pee Wee’s Playhouse. The music is a bit generic, though.
The House with a Clock in its Walls might just be Goosebumps 2.0, but what it does, it does very well.
Mission Impossible: Fallout (*** and a half)
Has it really been 23 years since “Mission: Impossible” was rebooted as a movie series starring Tom Cruise?
It’s impressive that these movies have continued for so long without ever wearing out their welcome. Yet… I can’t shake the feeling that they never reached their full potential. What is “Mission: Impossible” even about? Can you remember the plots of any Mission Impossible story aside from the original Brian DePalma movie? There’s a terrorist or ex-spy or whatever, and they have a bomb/virus/something and Tom Cruise needs to save the day? Anyway, that’s pretty much the plot of Mission Impossible Fallout, and there isn’t really any motivation for much of what happens. It’s just a bunch of extraneous players and “gotcha!” moments designed to make the story seem way more complicated than it actually is.
Despite that… yes, this movie is actually quite enjoyable. It’s stylish, it’s exciting, it’s nail-biting, and some the action scenes are REALLY good. The big new addition to the cast is Henry Cavill, who is actually pretty damn great. I never cared much for his interpretation of Superman, but he’s very intimidating and effective in Mission: Impossible (and yes, the mustache helps!). The action scenes famously used real stunts whenever possible. Tom Cruise actually had to learn to skydive so that a HALO jump could be filmed in real life, and he later broke his leg doing parkour stunts across London (costing the studio’s insurers tens of millions). The action looks great, and it looks real.
But… is there anything of substance? Well… a little. Again, the plot is a typical terrorist yarn tied in a deceptively simply knot, but there are some scenes that actually give Ethan Hunt solid character development. In particular, the re-introduction of Mrs. Hunt proves surprisingly poignant, as well as the explanation for why the couple split up between MI:III and Ghost Protocol.
In short, great action scenes and stunt work plus a few genuinely moving scenes make up for a cliché spy-thriller plot. “Fallout” is certainly better than “Rogue Nation,” but doesn’t take the series to a higher level. If you’ve enjoyed the previous ones, you’ll know what to expect.
Bee Movie (**)
I’ve heard people refer to Bee Movie as the worst animated Dreamworks movie (with the possible exception of Shark Tale), and I was curious…
Bee Movie starts out with a worker bee who isn’t sure if he wants to be a worker like his father, and instead wants to fly outside with the “pollen jocks” (which is a stupid name, BTW). That’s a very cliché family movie premise, but it works. And then, the bee gets a human girlfriend and decides to sue the human race for stealing bee honey. Even putting aside the interspecies sorta-romance, this is a dumb plot, but I could see it working as a Jerry Seinfeld standup routine:
“You ever think about the poor bees that make our honey? Don’t get me wrong, I love honey, but… We definitely aren’t paying those bees minimum wage. And then we put their honey in bear jars? Bears don’t make honey. Bees make honey. Bears kill the bees that make honey!”
I could see this being funny in the more abstract context of a standup monologue. In the context of a story, in which Jerry Seinfeld actually plays a sentient bee suing the human race over honey production, it’s something else entirely. It’s not just absurd observational humor, because there’s a story we’re supposed to be invested in. But… the story is too stupid to take seriously at all. And even if the stupider bits were removed, I’d question the value of an eco-fable that mishandles the most basic facts about bees and pollination. Should we really be teaching kids such bad science, all while making them hate the honey industry?
You might ask, “well, is this worse than A Bug’s Life?” True, Pixar did depict white-pigmented ants with 4 limbs, but that was a visual choice. It wasn’t important to the story, let alone the moral of the story.
Is it unfair to focus this entire review on the stupid plot? Maybe, but there isn’t that much to say about the rest of the movie. The rest of the movie is OK. Some parts are funny, and some of the “bee’s eye” visuals are compelling, especially in the early flight sequences. So Bee Movie is not a complete waste of time, but it’s definitely a very weak entry in the Dreamworks canon.
Gigi (*** and a half)
I first heard about this movie as a late-night show joke in the early 2000’s. Ben Affleck had just starred in Gigli, which was quickly panned as the worst movie ever. Thus, the joke was that the only people who paid to see Gigli had mistaken it for the classic musical Gigi.
Gigi is a musical from Lerner and Loewe, the team that hit it big with shows like My Fair Lady and Brigadoon. Gigi is a show in a very similar musical style, and is probably best known for the song “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” It’s a charming show with a lot of the same virtues as most mid-20th-century movie musicals: beautiful Technicolor, decent humor, stylish costumes, and pleasant musical numbers. The plot (which is secondary to the music) concerns a bored wealthy Parisian named Gaston who tires of his usual routine and instead seeks companionship with some quirky lower-class family friends, including an outspoken teenage girl named “Gigi.” You can probably guess where this story goes.
A strange aspect of Gigi is the sub-culture it’s supposed to be about, which I frankly didn’t understand, didn’t like, and wasn’t even sure was a real thing. Gigi is trained in being very proper, not so that she can get a rich husband (which would make sense), but so she can be the temporary mistress of a rich man for all the tabloids to write about. Do people actually intend that as a career option? This isn’t some incidental plot detail; it’s actually key to the conflict, and makes no sense at all. Is this some weird, forgotten subculture, or a satire that’s lost on modern audiences? Since the movie doesn’t explain any of this, it immediately dates the story.
Gigi is a fun, well-done musical that mostly gets marked down for poor subject matter. The premise doesn’t hold up, but the execution is classic Lerner and Loewe theatrical fun.
On Golden Pond (***)
I planned on auditioning for the play On Golden Pond later in the year, and so decided to check out the movie version.
On Golden Pond is basically a story about getting old. The main character, Norman Thayer, is starting to lose his memory, and maintains enough awareness of his mental degradation to be freaked out by this. To hide his tragic deterioration, Norman takes on a sarcastic curmudgeonly persona that distances himself from his adult daughter. The story is a relatively low-key plot in which the decaying old man rediscovers some of his youthful enthusiasm by teaching a teen boy how to fish.
The two leads are played by legendary actors Henry Fonda and Catherine Hepburn, and their charming and nuanced portrayals remind us why we like these actors in the first place. They give subtle performances, without a lot of showing off, and I appreciate that. The same can be said for the two awkward younger men, in the roles I’ll be auditioning for.
There are two obvious flaws of the movie, however. First of all, it’s one of those “based on a play” movies that is very obviously based on a play. There are a decent number of extra scenes to make use of the medium (i.e. this isn’t Fences, which might as well have been a filmed play), but it’s still pretty clear from that the story is meant to convey the intimate dialogue-driven experience of live theater. Second, Jane Fonda is honestly pretty bad in the movie, sporting a weird-looking tan and a lot of overacting. Her character almost comes off as bipolar.
On Golden Pond is cute, endearing, and actually pretty emotional towards the end. But it’s probably not very many people’s favorite movie.