No matter how you want to trace the lineage of the music biopic, we don’t arrive at a formula-to-an-absolute-fault film like Bohemian Rhapsody without first traveling through James Mangold’s Walk the Line. To see Johnny Cash resurface in Mangold’s return to the genre (now played by a perpetually suave Boyd Holbrook) is like witnessing a poltergeist haunting another film. Or a demon that somehow escaped total exorcism from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a superior take down of the music biopic and a film that remains culturally relevant so long as Hollywood continues churning out mediocre celebrations of celebrity.
Walk the Line was a crossover success, breaking $100 million at the box office, garnering generally positive reviews, and earning a number of accolades including an Oscar for Reese Witherspoon. A Complete Unknown is angling to do the same. The problem (perhaps) is that Continue reading A Complete Unknown (2024) Movie Review→
There is something both unnecessary yet totally fitting about the new musical prequel to the 1971 film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (itself an adaptation of the Roald Dahl book of a slightly different name). It makes sense, in that director Paul King received much acclaim for his adaptation of another beloved children’s literature property in Paddington. It is unnecessary in the same way that any modern-day IP reboot has to justify itself beyond the motivation of cashing in. Wonka is far less lazy than most of these reboot efforts, but it also never shakes the sense of being inessential.
The film’s opening number does a clever job of establishing the basic premise (in short, consumer capitalism suppresses true entrepreneurial spirit and creative innovation for the sake of monopolistic stability and commodity homogenization). It is also Continue reading Wonka (2023) Movie Review→
Shin Ultraman, Country Gold, and Give Me Pity! are screening as part of the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 14 – August 3.
Please Baby Please is screening as part of the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 14 – August 3.
Newlyweds Suze (Andrea Riseborough) and Arthur (Harry Melling) witness a murder outside of their apartment building. The culprits, a greaser gang called the Young Gents, then turn their attention to the couple, initiating a series of events that change the two people forever.
Please Baby Please is a noir-tinged send-up of the biker gang movies of the 1950s, but that description does not come close to identifying what the film is accomplishing. Amanda Kramer’s film is an articulate examination of Continue reading Review: Please Baby Please — Fantasia Festival 2022→
In the Heights is the first big post-pandemic movie to feel like a theatrical event. That was my experience, anyway. And this is coming from someone who’s never seen the stage play from Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Algeria Hudes. Someone who has only a passing knowledge of film musicals in general.
Tenet was pushed early in the pandemic as the theatrical savior (I recall the whole world chanting in chorus, “if Chris Nolan can’t do it, then who can”). That proved to be too early and, frankly, not nearly splashy enough for a blockbuster. Just last weekend, A Quiet Place Part II and Cruella sparked life into an American box office which had been more or less comatose for over a year. The former is a popcorn-munching thriller with its pluses and minuses (I can’t speak to the latter). But it’s not In the Heights.
Jon M. Chu’s follow-up to the lavish and vibrant Crazy Rich Asians doubles down on the extravagance, painting the blocks of Washington Heights, NYC with lively choreography and the occasional cinematic flourish. The film feels Continue reading In the Heights (2021) Movie Review→
I am not overly familiar with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s feline musical Cats, but I gather that the 2019 film adaptation from Tom Hooper is fairly loyal to the subject matter. Victoria (Francesca Hayward), a young white-haired cat, is thrown violently from a car and finds herself in London streets populated with other cats. She just so happens to be arriving on the day of the Jellicle Ball, an annual event where jellicle cats compete in the Jellicle Choice, which allows one lucky jellicle cat to ascend to a new jellicle life in the “Heaviside Layer.”
I cannot confidently tell you what “jellicle” means.
Cats is, to put it kindly, hard to watch. The humanoid manifestations of these cat characters, rendered in CGI but maintaining the general visages of the performers’ faces, has been Continue reading Cats (2019) Movie Review→
The throw-out umbrella term “live action” used to describe the slough of Disney “re-imaginations” is a misnomer. It has been since The Jungle Book recreation in 2016, which is live action only in its employment of Neel Sethi as Mowgli. Everything else in that film is comprised of computer generated visual effects.
Yesterday is a perfect example of a film that makes for a great trailer. A trailer that hides everything but the premise, because nothing other than the premise would be enticing to put into a trailer.
This premise is this: a global blackout lasting 12 seconds causes failing musician Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) to be struck by a bus. After leaving the hospital, he is shocked to find that Continue reading Yesterday (2019) Movie Review→
“Teen Spirit” is an American Idol-esque pop reality competition in which teens sing and dance in hopes of achieving a record contract. Violet (Elle Fanning) is a seventeen-year-old who sneaks out at night to perform to a near-empty dive bar. She croons to one listener, silhouetted by a neon heart sign. “I was a fool,” she repeats until the song fades, and the one man (Zlatko Buric) claps.
About 10 minutes into A Star is Born—that is to say, the 2018 Bradley Cooper-directed A Star is Born—country rock superstar Jackson Maine (Cooper) explains to his love-at-first-sight (and soon to be muse) date Ally (Lady Gaga) something very important. Drunk, but conjuring up a moment of lucidity, he points around at the patrons of the bar. “Everyone in this bar is talented at one thing or another,” he says. But Ally. Ally has something to say. And that means something. That’s bigger than just being talented.
With this line, Cooper both encapsulates the entire film and reveals its biggest flaw. A Star is Born is certainly talented at one thing or another. But I don’t know if Continue reading A Star is Born (2018) Movie Review→
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