by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
"You don't have to believe me. I'm used to people not believing me."
"Destiny" (Constance Wu) is telling her tale to Elizabeth (Julia Stiles), a writer in the midst of a story on a gang of high-end strippers who were busted for drugging clients and fleecing them for thousands.
The disclaimer is a clear yet-not-overbearing sign that our window into the world of Hustlers may not necessarily be the most clear and reliable. It's one of many wise choices made by writer/director Lorene Scafaria in her adaptation of Jessica Pressler's article on "The Hustlers at Scores."
Wu is terrific as the naive newbie, overshadowed only by a completely magnetic Jennifer Lopez as Ramona, the stripping legend who teaches Destiny (and by extension, us) the ropes of spotting the highest-rolling Wall St. d-bags to milk for all they can.
But when the crash hits in '08, times get tough for everybody, and it isn't hard to justify hatching a plan to swindle the swindlers.
Scafaria ((Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, The Meddler) is not shy about the Scorsese influences, and seeing Will Ferrell and Adam McKay as executive producers makes The Big Short-syled humor all the more understandable.
No matter. This is still a supremely assured vision from Scafaria, cleverly constructed with visual flair, solid laughs, a sizzling pace and some truly memorable sequences.
One of the many great soundtrack choices comes right out of the gate, as Scafaria sets the stakes with Janet Jackson's spoken-word opening to "Control."
Who's got it? Who doesn't? And who's badass enough to go get it?
It's a wild, intoxicating high of girl power. And when it all comes crashing down, the moral ambiguities are scattered like dollar bills under the pole. As Ramona is quick to remind us, if there's money being thrown, there will always be people ready to dance.
https://youtu.be/nyQ9uGoHSwQ
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
In a surprisingly touching circle of art and life and imitating, Brittany Runs a Marathon charts its main narrative course with humor, charm and insight, while solid doses of humanity are never out of sight.
It may be the based-on-truth story of a woman taking control of her life, but in the process, it's also the story of longtime supporting actor not only taking the lead, but literally transforming before our eyes.
Writer/director Paul Downs Colaizzo, a playwright and TV director making his feature debut, drew inspiration from close friend Brittany O'Neil, who got her messy affairs in order by making some big changes.
One of those was a commitment to running, and a goal to complete the New York City marathon.
The film version finds Brittany Folger (Jillian Bell) out of shape and out of sorts. Allowing herself to be used by friends and randos, Brittany is the fat, funny sidekick who uses her quick, caustic wit as a suit of armor.
Early on, Brittany is just the sort of vessel Bell has used to steal big and small screen scenes for years. She nails the setup with hilarity, which isn't surprising. But the most impressive layer in Bell's performance is how she ups her game when the laughs don't come as often, dodging any false notes in Brittany's wake up call.
We knew Bell could do funny, but this is a performance full of drama that's equally impressive (if not more).
Credit Colaizzo for some equally deft maneuvering, making sure this is more complex that the standard "get hot to get happy" makeover fantasy you could hardly be blamed for expecting.
Brittany may joke about people who "missed the point of those Dove ads," but when she tells her attractive friend that "my life is just harder than yours," it rings with the capital that Colaizzo's script has earned.
The in-the-moment nods are numerous but not overdone, contrasting Brittany's self-loathing with the emptiness of comparing real life to social media staging or quick assumptions from afar.
As hard as it is for Brittany to stick with running, dropping the pounds is the easy part. She has to grow emotionally, starting with accepting the fact that she's worthy of the friendship her running pals (Michaela Watkins, Micah Stock) are offering.
And what's up with Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar- terrific), who pulls the night housesitting shift the same place Brittany handles the daytime? Is he stuck in the friend zone? Is she?
Sure, the film has a convenient plot turn or two, but this is some sneaky good crowd pleasing. Brittany Runs a Marathon ropes you with the comfort of formula, then dopes you with emotional complexities, warm sincerity and a knockout lead performance.
Winner winner sensible dinner.
https://youtu.be/Ks_HSj1UqKI
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Comparing most films to Pan’s Labyrinth would be setting a bar too high. Guillermo del Toro’s macabre fable of war and childhood delivers more magic, humanity and tragedy than any one film should be allowed.
And yet, it’s hard to watch Issa Lopez’s Tigers Are Not Afraid without thinking about little Ofelia, the fairies and the Pale Man.
Lopez’s fable of children and war brandishes the same themes as del Toro’s masterpiece, but grounds the magic with a rugged street style.
Tigers follows Estrella, a child studying fairy tales—or, she was until her school is temporarily closed due to the stray bullets that make it unsafe for students. As Estrella and her classmates hide beneath desks to avoid gunfire, her teacher hands her three broken pieces of chalk and tells her these are her three wishes.
But wishes never turn out the way you want them to.
There is an echo through Latin American horror that speaks to the idea of a disposable population. You find it in Jorge Michel Grau’s brilliant 2010 cannibal horror We Are What We Are and again in Emiliano Rocha Minter’s 2016 taboo-buster, We Are the Flesh.
Lopez amplifies that voice with a film that feels horrifying in its currency and devastating in the way it travels with the most vulnerable of those discarded people.
Estrella is befriended by other orphans in her city, each aching with the loss of parents and each on the move to escape the dangers facing the powerless.
Though Tigers bears the mark of a del Toro – Labyrinth as well as The Devi’s Backbone – it can’t quite reach his level of sorrowful lyricism. It makes up for that with the gut punch of modernity. Though this ghost story with tiny dragons and stuffed tigers is darkly fanciful, it’s also surprisingly clear-eyed in its view of the toll the drug war takes on the innocent.
It’s Latin American horror at its best.
https://youtu.be/KyoE0mSJXO8
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
You may have heard that Linda Ronstadt can't sing anymore, her incredible instrument silenced by Parkinson's disease. But Ronstadt's harmonies with a nephew in The Sound of My Voice are gentle and effective, and rendered more bittersweet by her quick, self-deprecating dismissal.
"This isn't really singing."
The ironic truth in this engaging documentary is that the sound of her spoken voice is what gives the film the warmth it needs to register as more than just a big screen fan letter.
Ronstadt initially balked at the pitch by directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Howl, Lovelace) but they won her over with a promise to let her tell the story and define its terms.
So while we don't get any juicy intimacies or sordid details, we do get some fantastic highlights from her archives and a unique, first-person perspective of being a queen in a king's game.
For anyone under 40, the film is also a great intro to one of the most successful female singers in history. I know Taylor Swift is great and all, kids, but in the 1970s, her name was Linda Ronstadt.
An Arizona native who was raised on a multitude of musical styles, Ronstadt came to L.A. as a teen. After first raising interest and eyebrows as the defiant girl singer not wanting to be tied down to just one lover on the Stone Poneys' 1967 hit "Different Drum," Ronstadt's 70s solo success reached unprecedented levels for a female artist.
With hits on the pop, R&B and country charts, a string of platinum albums and magazine covers, she was everywhere. Later decades brought torch song projects with Nelson Riddle, a starring role in Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, a record-breaking Spanish language album paying tribute to her father's heritage, and forming a legendary country trio with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.
It is truly an incredible career, and reminding us of that fact seems to be goal number one for Epstein and Friedman. Their mission is more than accomplished, and with Ronstadt herself as the guide, it's like getting a backlot studio tour from Spielberg.
You hear wonderful anecdotes about how Ronstadt handled sexism both systemic and casual (former boyfriend J.D. Souther asked her to cook him dinner - she handed him a PB&J), how her backing band left to start a little combo called the Eagles and how none of the successes could quell the nagging feeling that she was never good enough.
She was. The Sound of My Voice is all the proof you need.
https://youtu.be/eDMYAsu5PvI
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Have you ever noticed how adorable Browns fans are during pre-season every year? Every year! There is always reason for optimism.
That’s how I feel about filmmakers with the “haunted house attraction that’ll really kill you” premise. Year after year (The Houses October Built, 2014; 31, 2016; The Houses October Built 2, 2017; Hell Fest, 2018) somebody wheels out the stinky old corpse of an idea and says, “This year, we’ll get it right!”
The 2019 attempt belongs to writers/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who struck silent film gold last year with the screenplay for A Quiet Place. (In retrospect, maybe we didn’t give co-writer/director John Krasinski enough credit for that one.)
Haunt follows a handful of college students seeking thrills on Halloween. They stumble upon an isolated haunted house attraction—with not one single visitor. On Halloween night. Kids! Come on! Clearly it’s either the lamest thing on earth or it will kill you. This isn’t rocket science.
And yet, they give up their cell phones, sign some waivers and enter.
Katie Stevens is Harper, damaged but mainly wholesome brunette and center of gravity for the group. Will Brittain is Nathan, pre-requisite “will they or won’t they” nice fella who sees past Harper’s prickly exterior.
In truth, the actors playing the six gullible youths all perform above expectation and, mercifully, Beck and Woods choose not to subject us to the couple that just can’t keep their hands to themselves.
Made sensibly and economically, Haunt sticks to what it knows and focuses on what it came to do. Gaps in logic are few (they’re there, but they’re not distracting). One or two of the kills offer intrigue and the villains are, if not especially impressive, at least kind of fun.
It's adequate. Unlike the Browns. The Browns are going all the way this year. No doubt. No doubt about it.
https://youtu.be/61KqbDkYK_w
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
It is tough to find a fresh direction to take fiction published 201 years ago, let alone a tale already made into countless films. Is there a new way—or reason—to look at the Frankenstein fable?
Writer/director/horror favorite Larry Fessenden thinks so. He tackles the myth, as well as a culture of greed and toxic masculinity, with his latest, Depraved.
Adam (a deeply sympathetic Alex Breaux) is kind of an act of catharsis for Henry (David Call). A PTSD-suffering combat medic, Henry is so interested in finding a way to bring battlefield fatalities back to life that he doesn’t even question where his Big Pharma partner Polidori (Joshua Leonard, in another excellent genre turn) gets his pieces and parts.
Here’s a question that’s plagued me since I read Shelley’s text in 8th grade. Why take parts of cadavers? Why not bring one whole dude back and save all that time and stitching effort? Frank Henenlotter (Frankenhooker) and Lucky McKee (May) found answers to that question. Fessenden isn’t worried about it.
He’s more interested in illuminating the way a culture is represented in its offspring. Pour all your own ugly tendencies, insecurities and selfish behaviors into your creation and see what that gets you.
Fessenden isn’t subtle about the problems he sees in society, nor vague about their causes. Depraved is the latest in a host of genre films pointing fingers at the specific folks who have had the power to cause all the problems that are now coming back to bite us in the ass.
It’s the white guys with money because, well, because it is.
Along with Leonard’s oily approach and Breaux’s tenderness, the film boasts solid supporting work from Chloe Levine (The Transfiguration, Ranger) and especially Addison Timlin, who is great in a very small role.
There is a sloppy subtext here, charming in its refusal to be tidy, about the man Adam used to be (or one of them), the girl he didn’t really appreciate, and the way, deep down, a mildly douchy guy can learn a lesson about self-sacrifice.
In its own cynical way, Depraved does offer a glimmer of hope for mankind. Fessenden doesn’t revolutionize the genre or say anything new, though, but you won’t leave the film wishing Shelley’s beast would just stay dead.
https://youtu.be/T1QwpdU39kk
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Falling somewhere between David Lynch and Anna Biller in the under-charted area where the boldly surreal meets the colorfully feminist, writer/director Jennifer Reeder’s Knives and Skin offers a hypnotic look at Midwestern high school life.
When Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) goes missing, carefully erected false fronts start crumbling all over town. Cheerleaders take a harder look at football players. Football players cry in their Mustangs. Goth girls fondle pink dresses. Pregnant waitresses bleed at the kitchen sink.
And everyone sings impossibly appropriate Eighties alt hits acapella. Even the dead.
Knives and Skin’s pulpy noir package lets Reeder explore what it means to navigate the world as a female. As tempting as it is to pigeonhole the film as Lynchian, Reeder’s metaphors, while fluid and eccentric, are far more pointed than anything you’ll find in Twin Peaks.
She looks at relationships between mothers and daughters, as daughters toe the line between acceptable and unacceptable levels of conformity and mothers bear the toll exacted by years of fitting in.
Reeder blurs that line between popularity and ostracism, characters finding common ground as they address the question: Are you a whore or a tease?
The ire is not one-dimensional. Though toxic masculinity requires a price, the males in Middle River, even the worst among them, are as sympathetic and as damaged by expectations as anybody.
Reeder’s peculiar dialogue finds its ideal voice with Grace Smith as Joanna Kitzmiller, a jaded feminist and budding entrepreneur. Likewise, Marika Englehardt and Tim Hopper bring extraordinary nuance and sympathy to what could have been campy characters.
This cockeyed lens for the middle American pressure cooker that is high school suggests exhilarating possibilities, but does so with a melancholy absurdity that recognizes the impossibility of it all.
And in the end, all the Middle River Beavers stare longingly at the highway that leads out of town.
https://vimeo.com/325181448
" ["post_title"]=> string(159) "Movie Reviews: "Hustlers," "Brittany Runs a Marathon," "Tigers Are Not Afraid," "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice," "Haunt," "Depraved," "Knives and Skin"" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(0) "" ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["ping_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(128) "movie-reviews-brittany-runs-a-marathon-tigers-are-not-afraid-linda-ronstadt-the-sound-of-my-voice-haunt-depraved-knives-and-skin" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2019-09-13 10:16:56" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-09-13 14:16:56" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(63) "https://wnnd-fm.sagacom.com/?post_type=saga_on_air&p=15418" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(11) "saga_on_air" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" } [1]=> object(WP_Post)#5125 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(15387) ["post_author"]=> string(2) "66" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2019-09-06 08:03:50" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-09-06 12:03:50" ["post_content"]=> string(3341) "by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
It’s appropriate that so much of the film Luce follows the titular character’s preparation for a debate. The film itself seems to beg for audience argument.
Luce is a bit of an American miracle. A boy soldier rescued from Eritrea at 7 by a wealthy white couple, he’s reinvented himself by the beginning of his senior year in high school, becoming the golden child: debate team captain, cross country captain, speech team captain and eventual valedictorian.
A sternly supportive history teacher (Octavia Spencer) raises questions, her goal to help ensure Luce understands that he “cannot F-up.” It becomes the catalyst for a tense, borderline terrifying exploration of identity, preconceptions, race, refined society and who gets to take credit for what.
Kelvin Harrison Jr., so wounded and wonderful in It Comes at Night, holds all these puzzle pieces together as the enigma at the center of a mystery. His turn as the charismatic central figure in this highly polite and scholarly debate is fascinating, haunting and, in rare flashes, painfully vulnerable.
His manufactured persona, his carefully studied sincerity, emphasize an image that’s too good to be true. But Harrison Jr. brings so many additional layers—manifestations of survival techniques, an ability to read his environment and predict everyone’s behavior—that give his character needed complexity. Luce is not just a black student everyone can be proud of, or some wonderful example of how our system can work.
And that’s what makes him scary. So when he executes a history assignment too well—writing from the perspective of a historical figure who suggested violence as a moral response to colonialism—he freaks out a teacher (Spencer, wonderfully righteous) who’d rather he embrace his favored status so she can bask in the glow.
Naomi Watts and Tim Roth play Luce’s socially conscious parents, and the pairing makes it tough to keep your mind from recalling Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s grim picture of affluent familial catastrophe. Whether intentional or not, the casting adds an underlying sense of urgent dread—as does Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury’s discordant score.
Watts is particularly strong, and the who-knows-what dance she does with Roth as their son plays one off the other adds a queasying rhythm to the mystery.
Julius Onah's direction sometimes betrays the stagebound nature of the source material. (J.C. Lee adapts his own much lauded play.) Too much is revealed through lengthy monologues and there's little smooth flow from scene to scene.
But his film teems with provocation and his cast more than meets that challenge. Harrison Jr. in particular is a revelation, an image of a thing that doesn't exist but is so true you'll never know if anything else is really there.
https://youtu.be/aqzgDB1CMI4
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Twenty years ago Jim Caviezel and Dennis Quaid sleuthed across time via a ham radio to solve a serial killer case. But who remembers Frequency?
Jacob Estes might. The writer/director revisits the time loop murder mystery concept with a leaner film in Don’t Let Go.
Estes (Mean Creek – if you haven’t seen it, do so) assembles a shockingly strong ensemble beginning with David Oyelowo (Selma) and Storm Reid (A Wrinkle in Time) and extending through support players Brian Tyree Henry, Alfred Molina and Mykelti Williamson. Together they do what they can to elevate a supernatural thriller too mired in cop movie clichés to take advantage of its unusual premise.
Oyelowo is Detective Radcliff, or Uncle Jack as he’s known to Ashley (Reid), the niece he loves like his own daughter. So when he finds her and both her parents dead, he’s devastated. It isn’t long before he’s receiving phone calls from his dead niece. Together, they try to solve the riddle of her death so they might be able to turn back time.
That’s a tough premise to deliver on without stooping to sentimentality, but Estes rarely makes that misstep. In fact, the film devotes frustratingly little time to the emotional weight of its premise, taking the easy way out repeatedly with cop show shoot outs, ambiguous motives and obvious twists.
Oyelowo (a magnificent actor who needs to choose better projects) commands the screen with a quiet torment that hints at what the film refuses to address: loneliness, guilt, sorrow. Likewise Reid, saddled with far less believable dialog, infuses her character with a believable spunk and charm.
Henry and Molina are criminally underused in a film that’s far too safe and much too rote for its supernatural notes to work. Maybe Estes’s goal was to ground the tale with enough realism to offset the fantasy but he managed to do neither justice.
The result is a blandly forgettable waste of a truly impressive group of actors.
https://youtu.be/RB-_oNDH0d8
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
After nearly an hour of valiantly struggling to find depth in a character written mainly in cleavage, actress Allison Paige does get to deliver the most truthful moment in Bennett's War.
"The sponsors are all men and I have boobs!"
Writer/director Alex Ranarivelo may have just been trying for funny, but in this drawerful of ten thousand shallow spoons, the line is a self-aware knife.
Sophie (Paige) needs those sponsors for her husband Bennett's (Michael Roark) motocross team to finally go pro. Bennett had been a promising young racer before he joined the Army Rangers, but the bum leg he came home with carried a warning Ranarivelo thinks we don't quite get the first three times we hear it.
"No unnecessary risks, or you'll never walk again!"
Oh, and Bennett's dad (country singer Trace Adkins) is going to lose the family farm.
So Bennett has to race again, dammit, it's who he is!
Ranarivelo has made a career out of what are essentially middle school sports dramas for the big screen. The heroes and villains are drawn in the most easily identifiable colors, with the stakes repeated as often as the dumbed down exposition.
There are issues here (the struggles of veterans and/or family farmers) that have merit, but exploring them is not Ranarivelo's M.O.
The only real surprise is that no one yells "Put him in a body bag!" before our injured hero takes the bad guy down with a surprise move at the big competition.
Wax off.
https://youtu.be/I-wvJY1QIL0
" ["post_title"]=> string(54) "Movie Reviews: "Luce," "Don't Let Go," "Bennett's War"" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(0) "" ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["ping_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(41) "movie-review-luce-dont-let-go-bennets-war" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2019-08-30 10:26:53" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-08-30 14:26:53" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(63) "https://wnnd-fm.sagacom.com/?post_type=saga_on_air&p=15340" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(11) "saga_on_air" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" } [3]=> object(WP_Post)#5131 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(15289) ["post_author"]=> string(2) "66" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2019-08-21 09:14:36" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-08-21 13:14:36" ["post_content"]=> string(16630) "by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Zack Gottsagen wanted to be a movie star.
Filmmakers Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz told Zack there just weren't many roles available for actors with Down Syndrome.
He asked if they could write him one.
The result is The Peanut Butter Falcon, an irresistibly endearing adventure powered by an unwavering sincerity and a top flight ensemble that is completely committed to propping it up.
Zak (a terrific Gottsagen), getting an assist from his elderly roommate (Bruce Dern), makes a successful break from his nursing home quarters with a mission in mind: finding the wrestling school run by his idol, the Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church).
Tyler (Shia LeBeouf) is also running - from a big debt to a small time tough guy (John Hawkes) - and when Zak stows away on Tyler's rickety boat, the two embrace life on the lam as Zak's case worker Eleanor (Dakota Johnson) slowly closes in.
The quest carries obvious parallels to the real Zack's Hollywood ambitions, and the Nilson/Schwartz directing team lovingly frames it as a swamp-ridden fable full of Mark Twain homages.
You get the sense early on that this is the type of material that would crumble if any actor betrayed authenticity for even a moment. It also isn't long before you're confident that isn't going to happen here.
LeBeouf is tremendous as the wayward rogue whose inner pain is soothed by his bond with the stubbornly optimistic Zak. The chemistry is unmistakable, and ultimately strong enough to welcome the arrival of Johnson, who gives her Eleanor layers enough to embody our fears of the "real world" puncturing this fairy tale.
The surrounding ensemble (including Jon Bernthal and real-life wrestling vets Mick Foley and Jake "the Snake" Roberts) and rootsy soundtrack color in the last spaces of a world wrestling with convention.
Sure, you'll find glimpses of feel good cliches. What you won't find is condescension, or the feeling that anything here - from the characters or the filmmakers alike - is an act of charity.
Often similar to last year's Shoplifters, The Peanut Butter Falcon is all about embracing family where you find it.
Following a dream, Zak finds it. And we feel it.
https://youtu.be/UNl9RqjLCwc
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
F Rich people.
I don’t know about you, but this is a sentiment I can get behind.
Grace (Samara Weaving, Mayhem) doesn’t know whether her soon-to-be in-laws are eccentric or they just plain hate her. Or maybe they are as evil as her groom Alex (Mark O’Brien) and his drunk-but-amiable brother Daniel (Adam Brody) say they are.
The brothers are just kidding, right?
Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Devil’s Due—meh) invite you to join the happy couple as they plunge into a world where the wealthiest among us would rather commit murder than do without what none of them worked very hard to earn.
At midnight on Grace and Alex’s wedding night, everyone assembles in the Le Domas family game room: Mom and Dad (Andie MacDowell and Henry Czerny), Aunt Helene (Nicky Guardagni), other siblings and in-laws. It’s a ritual. Just one quick game of hide and seek. What could go wrong?
The inky black comedy plays like a game of Clue gone mad with arterial spray, the film’s comic moments coinciding most often with the accidental slaughter of servants.
The filmmakers take advantage of Weaving’s grit and comic timing, skipping from one bloody comic set up to the next. The plot and the chase move quickly enough to keep you from dwelling on the shorthand character development, the errant plot hole and the occasional convenience. It’s fun, it’s funny, and it’s a bloody mess.
And yet, the film feels safe, as if it is loath to truly represent the wealthy as people who’d leech the life from those beneath them (a la Get Out). Although, like Jordan Peele’s horror classic, Ready or Not introduces a deeply disturbing song almost as chilling as Get Out’s “Run Rabbit, Run.”
Weaving is proving herself to be reliably badass in the genre, her central performance elevated by the sometimes inspired work of the ensemble. MacDowell, in particular, seems to be enjoying herself immensely.
Even with the clever turns and cheeky performances, the film lacks substance. I mean, yes, I can indulge my secret belief that the rich are evil all day long. So, thank you Ready or Not for playing that card. In the end, though, the film’s just a slight and entertaining (and gory) way to waste your time.
https://youtu.be/ZtYTwUxhAoI
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
There is a moment in George Miller’s 2015 action masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road. The empty bridal chamber is revealed quickly. Scrawled on the wall: Who killed the world?
It occurred to me partway through Jennifer Kent’s sophomore feature The Nightingale that Miller isn’t the only Aussie director with that question on the mind.
The Nightingale is as expansive and epic a film as Kent’s incandescent feature debut The Babadook was claustrophobic and internal. In it she follows Clare (Aisling Franciosi), an Irish convict sentenced to service in the UK’s territory in Tasmania.
What happens to Clare at the hands of Leftenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), the British officer to whom she is in service, is as brutal and horrifying as anything you’re likely to see onscreen this year. It’s the catalyst for a revenge picture, but The Nightingale is far more than just that.
As Clare enlists the aid of Aboriginal tracker Billie (Baykali Ganambarr, magnificent) to help her exact justice, Kent begins to broaden her focus. Those of us in the audience can immediately understand Clare’s mission because we witnessed her trauma in its horrifying detail. Kent needed us to recognize what British military men were capable of.
What she wants us to see is that the same thing—the worst, almost imaginable brutality—happened to an entire Australian population.
In the second act, Clare—on a higher social rung than her tracker, and just as condescending and racist as that position allows—and Billy begin to bond over shared experience. Franciosi’s fierce performance drives the film, but Ganambarr injects a peculiar humor and heart that makes The Nightingale even more devastating.
Kent’s fury fuels her film, but does not overtake it. She never stoops to sentimentality or sloppy caricature. She doesn’t need to. Her clear-eyed take on this especially ugly slice of history finds more power in authenticity than in drama.
Her tale becomes far more than an indictment of colonization, white male privilege, domination and subjugation. It’s a harrowing and brilliant tale of horror. It’s also our history.
https://youtu.be/YuP8g_GQIgI
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
A heartbreaking, sometimes devastating and absolutely necessary history lesson, One Child Nation turns a filmmaker's very personal story into a profile of shared helplessness.
Nanfu Wang grew up in China during the nation's strict "one child per family" social policy. Launched in 1979 and added to the Chinese constitution three years later, the policy endured until 2015, leaving scarred generations of parents and children in its wake.
Wang (who also provides frequent narration and commentary) and her co-director Jialing Zhang detail the shocking number of people affected by the policy, the horrifying lengths with which it was enforced, and the splinters of impact it continues to leave on families living oceans apart.
With interviews often reminiscent of Joshua Oppenheimer's unforgettable doc The Act of Killing, Wang looks back on atrocities with those who personally carried them out. The repeated defense of "I had no choice" is layered with startling and timely reminders of both Orwellian propaganda campaigns and the worldwide struggle for women's rights.
In another deeply poignant segment, we meet an elderly midwife desperately using the last years of her life in hopes of atonement for her past.
But the success Wang has with many of these interviews only makes the film's main weakness more glaring.
Where are the women who personally endured the forced abortions and sterilizations? Where are the mothers whose newborn daughters were casually abandoned or sold? Despite an early warning for Wang to "not make trouble," there is no clear explanation why this seemingly necessary perspective is lacking.
Otherwise, One Child Nation - disturbing as it often is - attacks an inhuman policy with an effectively informed humanity, along with a dire warning about whitewashing history.
"No child should be separated from their parents."
Imagine that.
https://youtu.be/gMcJVoLwyD0
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Olympus, then London, now Angel. They keep Fallen, must they keep getting up?
To be fair, Angel isn't nearly the dumpster dive we took in London. It sports comic relief from Nick Nolte, a fun mid-credits stinger and a truly impressive performance from a baby.
Surrounding all that, though, is a pedestrian and all too often obvious gotta -clear-my-name frameup that underdelivers on the action front.
Gerard Butler is back as Secret Service hero Mike Banning, with Morgan Freeman returning to the franchise as now-President Trumbull.
Mike has headaches and insomnia after years of action, but debates leaving the field for a desk promotion. He is still great at knocking out all the baddies who are nice enough to walk blindly past a corner he's hiding behind, but when there's a drone attempt on the President's life, Mike can't keep his entire team from being wiped out.
Suddenly, mounds of incriminating evidence point to Mike as the would-be assassin, who then must leave his wife (Piper Perabo) and child (that baby is good, I'm telling you) and go full Bourne fugitive guy to root out the real villains.
Who wants the President dead? And why?
If the answers are supposed to be surprises, someone forgot to tell director Ric Roman Waugh (Snitch) and his co-writers, asAngel is telegraphed from many preposterous angles with all manner of heavy handed exposition.
And once Banning takes refuge with his long lost, off the grid, battle scarred Dad (Nolte), the attempts at debating the morality of war land with a thud of pandering afterthoughts.
Hey, if your just here for some mindless action highs, that's fine, but Angel skirts them, curiously settling for repetitive shootouts and nods to first-person gaming enthusiasts.
Like Mike, this Fallen seems mostly tired. Even if it can get up, maybe it should reconsider.
https://youtu.be/g1NQ_pvlNx0
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Warning: this article contains some serious pro-Boss bias. Like, copious amounts.
Because a Springsteen fanatic like myself reviewing Blinded by the Light will be nowhere close to fair and balanced. Expecting a thumbs down is like, oh, I don't know....
Trying to start a fire without a spark?
Cool, we understand each other.
But beyond the singer or the songs, the real joyous triumph of the film is how it unabashedly adores not just this one particular artist, but the entire concept of inspiration.
Based on the memoir by Sarfraz Manzoor, the film rewinds to the late 80s when Javed (Viviek Kalra in an irresistible feature debut), a British teen of Pakistani descent, is trying to navigate high school amid the austere gloom of Thatcher conservatism and the ominous rise of far-right bigotry.
Drowning in a sea of synth pop, Javed's life changes when his friend Roops (Aaron Phagura) gives him some Springsteen cassettes.
As both a veteran of that awakening and a witness for others, I can tell you director/co-writer Gurinder Chadha nails it with a perfectly rockin' bullseye. Bruce's lyrics dance across the screen and around Javed's head, his fist pumping and his face beaming with a newfound sense of purpose.
Though his father (a terrific Kulvinder Ghir) bemoans the influence of "that Jewish singer" ("He's not Jewish - and that's racist!"), Javed, bolstered by encouragement from a sincere teacher (Hayley Atwell) and a new girlfriend (Nell Williams), takes the first steps toward a future of his own - as a writer.
Chadha (Bend it Like Beckham) manages a wonderful tonal balance, juggling humor (watch for that hilarious Rob Brydon cameo), coming of age pathos, blaring 80s hits, a mighty timely social conscience and even extended dance sequences.
Cynicism doesn't stand a chance. Chadha keeps the heart on Manzoor's sleeve beating loud, proud and unmistakable, knowing this borders on cornball and not giving a toss.
For Springsteen (who has been notoriously shy about licensing his songs) to give this project his complete blessing lends an immense layer of gravitas for longtime fans. Until that next Bruce concert, we are a choir eager for the preaching.
But replace Bruce with Aretha, Kurt Cobain, Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift and the exuberant joy of Blinded by the Light still works.
Inspiration, wherever you find it, is worth celebrating. Embrace it, and it might even lead to your....glory days.
One, two, three, four!
https://youtu.be/DmmHvnS0IKM
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
So apparently kids today get names like Brixlee, Soren and Thor. That's new.
And when puberty hits, they pretend they're plenty world wise, are tempted by peer pressure and worry that missing the big kissing party would be the end of the world. That's not so new.
With Superbad's Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg on board as producers, Good Boys takes that film's trusty formula and backs it up a few years, scoring a fair amount of solid laughs but not quite as much of the heartfelt smarts.
Max (Jacob Tremblay), Lucas (Keith L. Williams) and yes, Thor (Brady Noon) are new sixth graders and best friends, the Bean Bag Boys for Life! "Because we have bean bags." Duh.
They drop F-bombs, hope other kids think they're cool, and will stop at nothing to make Soren's (Izaac Wang) party where Max hopes to meet up with Brixlee (Millie Davis) and finally get the chance to puck up or shut up.
But the 'tween universe sends plenty of obstacles to keep the boys from the bash, some of which include drugs, alcohol, anal beads, angry high school girls, cops, a very busy highway, and a frantic paint ball battle at a nasty frat house (which turns out be a pretty inspired bit).
There's always some inherent humor in kids talking dirty and crossing paths with very adult things while misunderstanding most of them. Good Boys, to its credit, wants to be more, it's just unsure about how to get there.
Writer Gene Stupnitsky (Bad Teacher, Year One), directing his first feature, is at a disadvantage from the start. Superbad and Booksmart (you should see it!) both benefited from a leaving-for-college premise, which is just more of a life change than leaving for middle school.
But those films also found a tender heart inside their core friendships that Good Boys can't quite pin down. The boys are all adorable, and plenty of laughs - especially Tremblay's hilariously deadpan line about a sex doll- do land flush.
By the final bell, though, it's caught between caring about the boys and laughing at them, and so are we.
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Two years ago, Johannes Roberts proved he could craft some fine sharky thrills amid the soggy dialog and questionable logic of 47 Meters Down.
He's back as director/co-writer for Uncaged, with a bigger budget and a mission to deliver more of whatever you liked the first time. The scares? They're jumpier! The sharks? They're scarier! The water? Wetter!
Roberts builds these thrills on an unrelated shark tale. Four high school girls in Mexico go diving where they shouldn't - an underwater Mayan burial cave. It's currently being mapped by a team led by one of the girls' Dad (John Corbett), which makes the cutting edge dive gear more believable than last time.
But all that gear is perfectly form-fitting for a group of teen girls, so...
So, forget it, and appreciate how Roberts borrows elements from the horror gem The Descent to create satisfying waves of claustrophobic, over the top terror.
If you remember the best scene from 47, you'll see it re-imagined here, along with a very direct homage to Jaws and a nicely twisted and completely ridiculous finale.
Because if you haven't noticed, Spielberg's less is more approach to the monster has...say it with me...jumped the shark. For Roberts and Uncaged, more is more, and this film doesn't stop until you're shaking your head at the skillful outlandishness of it all.
https://youtu.be/AvXjx8SZbv8
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Low-key visionary director Richard Linklater, inexhaustible talent Cate Blanchett and wildly popular source material exploring creativity, motherhood and existential angst—Where’d You Go, Bernadette could work.
The title suggests two things. Metaphorically, it refers to a disappeared genius. Bernadette Fox ceased to exist when she abandoned her architectural artistry for parenthood and, as far as the creative world knew, vanished.
In a less metaphorical manner, the title refers to the actual mystery driving the plot of Maria Semple’s novel—the story of a teenager using emails, news clippings and notes to try to piece together the whereabouts of her now-literally-missing mother.
That mystery is mainly gone from Linklater’s film adaptation, as Bernadette (the ever-exquisite Blanchett) doesn’t up and vanish until well after the 90-minute mark, and because the audience knows where she is all the while.
Instead, Linklater focuses on why she left in the first place. Because, what could have been an ideal situation for another woman—wealthy husband (Billy Crudup) and his super-attentive administrative assistant, precocious and adoring daughter (Emma Nelson), nice neighborhood (even if the neighbors hate her), good schools, money to burn on virtual personal assistants (who turn out to be Russian identity thieves)—welp, it just doesn’t seem to be enough for Bernadette.
There’s a lot to like about Where’d You Go, Bernadette, including a game cast and some gorgeous footage. Unfortunately, under all that is yet another fantasy about a rich white woman who needs to find herself.
In its worst moments, the film falls back on catty mean girlisms, as if the greatest nightmare a woman could face would be for the withering cliquishness of high school to survive into adulthood, the popular moms making you feel like an outcast all over again.
The filmmaker hits his stride, unsurprisingly, when pairing Blanchett with, well, basically anybody. Her one-on-one moments with Nelson, Kristin Wiig (as prissy neighbor Audrey), Laurence Fishburne (playing a former colleague) and Crudup (neutered as his character is) almost make up for the blandly directionless narrative.
Linklater can do comedy (School of Rock!!). He can certainly dive into motherhood (Boyhood). Nobody’d argue his insight and artistry when it comes to documenting a romantic relationship with its ups and downs (Sunset series). Frustratingly, with this film he simply cannot seem to decide which direction to take.
Comedic moments are abandoned before they land, emotional messiness is tidied into submission, dramatic moments are undercut before they can generate any tension.
The resulting, meandering tale doesn't go much of anywhere.
https://youtu.be/Em1onUCArxs
" ["post_title"]=> string(107) "Movie Reviews: "Blinded by the Light," "Good Boys," "47 Meters Down: Uncaged," "Where'd You Go, Bernadette"" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(0) "" ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["ping_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(44) "movie-reviews-blinded-by-the-light-good-boys" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2019-08-16 10:33:00" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-08-16 14:33:00" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(63) "https://wnnd-fm.sagacom.com/?post_type=saga_on_air&p=15255" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(11) "saga_on_air" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" } [5]=> object(WP_Post)#5138 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(15223) ["post_author"]=> string(2) "66" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2019-08-08 09:24:37" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-08-08 13:24:37" ["post_content"]=> string(20525) "by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Dora the Explorer takes her backpack, her map and her adventures to the big screen. Can you say surprisingly entertaining?
It helps that director James Bobin (The Muppets, Flight of the Conchords) has mastered the art of cheeky-yet-wholesome fun. Our story begins in the jungle where 6-year-old Dora (Madelyn Miranda) and cousin Diego (Malachi Barton) seek adventure under the somewhat watchful eyes of Dora’s parents (Eva Longoria and Michael Pena).
But Diego is off to the big city with his parents and, about ten years later, Dora goes to stay with him while her parents seek the famed Lost City of Gold.
She may be 16, but Dora (Isabela Moner) hasn’t changed, which means the nightmare of high school is about to get worse for Diego (Jeff Wahlberg – yes, he’s a nephew).
And though the bulk of the plot deals with a kidnapping, a jungle adventure to find Dora’s parents, and an Indiana Jonesesque trek into a lost city, the heart of the film is with outsiders and outcasts facing high school.
Moner is an impressive talent, a point she’s proven with roles in Sicario 2 and Instant Family. She plays bright-eyed Dora with utter earnestness, allowing Bobin and a game cast to land plenty of jokes, none of them cynical or unkind.
This is definitely a family-friendly film, but you don’t have to be a preschooler to find enjoyment. Bobin’s good-natured humor winks at parents, the move to high school will endear the film to 'tweens, but the high spirit and affection for the source material won’t be lost on little ones.
Is it a classic? It is not. And if you were one of the many middle aged men sitting alone in the theater yesterday, for shame. But Dora and the Lost City of Gold is a charmer and not a bad way to spend some time with the family.
So remember, high school is a horrible nightmare. Be yourself. And no swiping!
https://youtu.be/ksj69JaBrAo
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Was there a story you heard as a kid that scared you sleepless? Mine was Bloody Fingers, the tale of a mangled man who dragged his carcass toward you. You could hear him coming: thump, thump, draaaaag. My neighbor used to sneak up behind me muttering those terrifying words.
Writer Alvin Schwartz knew how to work a kid’s nerves even better than my neighbor. Inspired by campfire tales and urban legends, he spun yarns for maximum kid fright, then paired them—and this is the important part—with the inspired line drawings by Stephen Gammell. The result, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, became the go-to for kids who like to be scared and schools who like to ban books.
Director André Øvredal (TrollHunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe) and co-writer Guillermo del Toro both know something about tingling the spine. Together with a team of writers—some veterans of horror, some of family films—they’ve created an affectionate and scary ode to the old series of books.
Set in Mill Town, Pennsylvania around Halloween, 1968—trees are turning, Nixon is about to be elected, Night of the Living Dead is showing at the drive in—Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark follows three wholesome high school outcasts and a handsome out-of-towner. On the run from the Vietnam-bound, letter-jacket wearing bully, they hide in the old, abandoned Bellows place. The town says the house is haunted.
Sounds a little cliched, right? The kind of story you’ve heard over and over, but that’s exactly the point. To begin to tell Schwartz’s tales—all of them pulled from the collective unconscious, all of them drawing on those same old stories that were new to us as kids—Øvredal sets a familiar and appropriate stage.
His framing device works well enough for a while. Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti), who hopes to be a writer herself, swipes creepy old child killer Sarah Bellows’s book of stories, but when she gets them home, new stories write themselves in the blank pages and, one by one, the kids in Mill Town go missing.
This is what PG-13 horror should look like. Yes, like most of the genre films engineered for youngsters, Scary Stories rehashes tropes familiar to adult viewers, but Øvredal's clear fondness for the terrifying source material, especially the illustrations, gives the film the primal, almost grotesque innocence of a childhood nightmare.
The film’s tone is spot-on, performances solid and the set design and practical effects glorious. This is more than an anthology of shorts. It’s a cohesive whole that contains a handful of Schwartz’s nightmares, but the whole is not as great as the sum of its parts. Too heavy with clichés in the framing device, the film loses steam as it rolls into its third act.
An analogy of lost innocence, nostalgic without becoming too sentimental, this is old school scary, as unapologetically unoriginal as its source material and almost as effective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf0JwXkXs0c
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Looking for trouble? You’ll find plenty in The Kitchen. Looking for nuance? Fresh out, suckas.
It’s a 70s crime drama stripped of style and subtext, yet able to squeeze considerable fun out of the exploitation vibe it revels in.
Kathy (Melissa McCarthy) Claire (Elizabeth Moss) and Ruby (Tiffany Haddish) are left with dwindling options when their Irish mob husbands are sent to prison for a botched robbery. It’s 1978 in Hell’s Kitchen, and the ladies realize the meager allowance from their hubbies’ crew ain’t gonna cut it.
Time for these sisters to start doing it for themselves!
And if that song was from the 70s, you’d hear it loud and proud alongside all the other strategically placed picks from that groovy decade. It’s not a Scorsese soundtrack strategy, really, but rather one that makes sure we hear the lyric that can most literally comment on what we’re seeing.
Call it a Berloff maneuver.
The Kitchen marks the directing debut of veteran writer Andrea Berloff (Straight Outta Compton), and from the start, her tone is as unapologetic as her main characters.
Their takeover of the Hells Kitchen action is too easy and their character development too broadly drawn. But just as you’re starting to wonder what this much talent (also including Margo Martindale, Domhnall Gleason, James Badge Dale and of course, Common) saw in this material, the sheer audacity of its often clumsily edited approach feels almost right.
Berloff’s script makes it clear that this is less about the shots and more about who calls them, with some surprises in store by act 3 and a committed cast won over by the comic book source material or Berloff’s vision for it. Or probably both.
Moss, as a meek victim pushed around too long, and Gleason, as the smitten psycho who gently schools her in dismembering a body, elevate the film with every scene they share. Haddish delivers the underestimated street smarts with McCarthy - the two time Oscar nominee whose range should no longer be in doubt - bringing an anchor of authenticity.
There’s an allegory here of strong women fed up with fragile masculinity. There’s also a bloody mess of retro schlocky mob noir tropes (patent pending).
I love it when a plan has some awkward missteps but still kinda sorta comes together.
https://youtu.be/fgit74aVAvM
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
When a way of life not only makes you a social outcast, but presents increasing dangers to those closest to you, what would motivate you to cling even tighter?
It's a premise that could easily lead to vilification, so credit filmmakers Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage for taking Them That Follow in a more resonant direction. Rather than relying on lazy condescension, they want to probe the psychological politics of control.
Mara (Alice Englert) is the pastor's daughter in a small community of snake handlers in the Appalachian mountains. Her father Lemuel (Walton Goggins) preaches strict adherence to the Word, which requires frequent tests of faith, subjugation of women and shunning the ways of the material world.
But Mara's interest is starting to move beyond the mountain, raising the suspicions of the stern Sister Slaughter (Olivia Coleman, recent Oscar-winner for The Favourite) and sparking the curiosity of her best friend Dilly (Kaitlyn Dever).
"Who you choose, girl, chooses your whole life," Sister Slaughter cautions Mara. And Mara will soon face choices that will alter several lives.
Them That Follow benefits from a beautifully rustic production design and an unhurried pace, building earnest layers of authenticity that mirror a sublime ensemble cast (which includes a nice dramatic turn from comic Jim Gaffigan).
Poulton and Savage are not here to mock religious beliefs, but rather to question the motives of leaders who seek control by division. Followers are belittled by proxy ("They look down on you!") while leaders make unhealthy demands and wash their hands of culpability ("It's God's law, not mine").
While the film's concerns are especially timely now, a third act that seems rushed and overly tidy loosens the grip of Them That Follow. The tail here has more bite than the head, but the serpent still deserves respect.
https://youtu.be/eXl1vjK4040
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
“The ocean’s always trying to kill you. It doesn’t take a break.”
So says Tracy Edwards, and she should know. At 24 years of age in 1989, fresh off a stint as cook on a charter boat, Edwards skippered the Maiden with the first all-female crew to enter England’s Whitbread Round the World Race.
Thirty years later, documentarian Alex Holmes revisits this historic event with clarity and candor.
It’s certainly no surprise that the odds were stacked against Edwards, although it is fascinating to look back at just how these sailors were treated by other yachtsmen as well as the media.
According to Jen Mundy, Edwards’s girlhood friend and member of her crew, those set to sail Maiden were told: “You’re not strong enough. You’re not skilled enough. Girls don’t get on. You’ll die.”
Girls don’t get on?
Yes, even as the Eighties came to a close there were enough commonly believed stereotypes about women’s inabilities and bitchy tendencies to sink a yacht. And Holmes is not ready to let those spouting such idiocy off the hook. He interviews a number of journalists, each of whom admit to being convinced the Maiden has no shot at completing the race. The Guardian’s Bob Fisher went so far as to refer to the crew as “a tinful of tarts.”
He actually defends that headline in the documentary.
It’s impossible not to notice that the word “woman” is used maybe twice in the entire film, every participant, even Edwards herself, preferring the term “girls.”
Vocabulary aside, Holmes finds an interesting arc for a sports doc. As the race begins, simply finishing the first leg was cause for patronizing celebration: a bunch of girls didn’t die. Hooray!
But Edwards and crew were, like everyone else in the race in 1989, competitors invested in the competition, focused on winning and only on winning. Unlike their competition, the crew of the Maiden seemed genuinely, even wildly unaware of the profundity of simply participating.
The spirit of female defiance, that’s the flag the Maiden flew at journey’s end. After proving their ability – after besting their competition repeatedly —that celebration lost its patronizing taint.
Scene after windy, wet, terrifying scene—the nautical thrills crisply underscored by Rob Manning and Samuel Sim’s score—skipper and crew of the Maiden strategize, tough it out, and risk a watery grave. And why?
Mainly because one malcontent—Edwards, who’d been suspended 26 times before she was finally expelled from school at 15—wanted to do it and was told she couldn’t.
“What do you mean I can’t? That’s just idiotic.”
Indeed.
https://youtu.be/OMBM10cBhIs
by Brandon Thomas, MaddWolf.com
Anyone with two working eyes knows that the criminal justice system in the United States is far from perfect and rarely yields actual justice. The situation is even bleaker for young men of color. Even after their time is served, people convicted of a crime have a hard time finding work and maintaining new relationships.
As unfair as this is for everyone that goes through it, it can be especially grueling for people convicted of crimes they did not commit.
Brian Banks (Aldis Hodge) was once a star high school football player. He and his mother (Sherri Shepherd) had planned for Brian to attend college and hopefully make it to the NFL. All of that changed with a chance encounter that led to an accusation of kidnapping and rape. The barriers Brian faces after his release from prison lead him to a lawyer (Greg Kinnear) who might be able to clear his name and give him back his future.
Brian Banks is an interesting look at incarceration in that the film never once questions Brian’s innocence. In fact, the audience is clued in early on that Brian is a character we can trust. This film isn’t one that dwells on twists and turns. It’s more interested in Banks himself and what his plight says about our justice system. Unfortunately, that look tends to be one dimensional, and pushed through the lens of a mediocre TV movie-of-the-week.
Hodge (Hidden Figures, Straight Outta Compton) brings a humanity to this role that makes it easy to cheer for Banks despite the over-abundance of cliche. He does a wonderful job showing Brian’s frustration, hurt and disappointment all at once. It’s a tightrope performance, and Hodge pulls it off beautifully.
But there’s a cheapness to Brian Banks that makes it look like it would be right at home on the Lifetime cable channel. This is especially surprising since director Tom Shadyac spent the majority of his career making huge studio movies like Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty and The Nutty Professor. None of these films is exactly Lawrence of Arabia, but they still had a distinct visual flair.
Despite a strong lead performance, Brian Banks can’t overcome its reliance on age-old courtroom cliche and melodrama that ends up bringing the movie down. It’s a film that had something to say, but the message became muddled and/or lost along the way.
https://youtu.be/k9-PqY5pEeo
" ["post_title"]=> string(98) "Movie Reviews: "Dora," "Scary Stories," 'The Kitchen," "Them That Follow," "Maiden," "Brian Banks"" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(0) "" ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["ping_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(80) "movie-reviews-dora-scary-stories-the-kitchen-them-that-follow-maiden-brian-banks" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2019-08-09 14:26:45" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-08-09 18:26:45" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(63) "https://wnnd-fm.sagacom.com/?post_type=saga_on_air&p=15223" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(11) "saga_on_air" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" } [6]=> object(WP_Post)#5308 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(13381) ["post_author"]=> string(2) "66" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2019-08-06 00:00:00" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-08-06 04:00:00" ["post_content"]=> string(237) "Join Trisha Moore this week and you can win a pair of tickets to see Boyz II Men this Thursday at the Columbus Commons! Trisha will open up the Rewind Ticket Window just after 9am! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7tmKAwMMjA " ["post_title"]=> string(51) "Win Boyz II Men tickets on the Rewind Morning Show!" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(0) "" ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["ping_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(50) "win-boyz-ii-men-tickets-on-the-rewind-morning-show" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2019-08-08 09:25:03" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-08-08 13:25:03" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(91) "https://wnnd-fm.sagacom.com/?saga_on_air=win-sammy-hagar-tickets-on-the-rewind-morning-show" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(11) "saga_on_air" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" } [7]=> object(WP_Post)#5307 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(15194) ["post_author"]=> string(2) "66" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2019-08-01 09:54:14" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-08-01 13:54:14" ["post_content"]=> string(17358) "by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Somewhere around its 6th installment, the Fast & Furious franchise tweaked its direction, abandoning logic and embracing ludicrous action as it jumped cars from skyscraper to skyscraper and waterskied off the back of launched torpedoes.
But things took off for real around Episode 7 when some mad genius decided to pit mountainous government operative Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) against Limey nogoodnik Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), each of them playing a self-lampooning version of themselves. Fun!
Where to go from there? How about we drop that whole car heist and espionage thing, expel Vincent Toretto and gang, bring in Idris Elba and see what happens?
And for the very first time, I was kind of looking forward to a F&F film.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw boasts more than ampersands. Internal logic? Cohesive plot? Thoughtful insights on man’s inhumanity to man?
Why, no.
Cheeky fun? Indeed!
The film indulges in the best elements of F&F (action lunacy, self-aware comedy) and dispenses with its weaknesses (schmaltz, Diesel). F&F: H&S consists primarily of fistfights, gun fights and vehicular chicanery stitched together with comic lines. Unfortunately, there is a plot, but it doesn’t get in the way too much.
A virus meant to thin the herd falls (or is injected!) into the hands of a rogue (or is she?!!) MI6 agent. The CIA (or is it?!!!) pulls together the two old enemies for no particular reason, but Ryan Reynolds shows up in a decidedly peculiar cameo (one of several to look out for) that draws your attention away from the first of many gaping plot holes.
By this point (about 7 minutes into the film) we’ve been through three separate fight sequences, each meant to articulate the character of one of our leads: down-and-dirty badass (Hobbs), smoothly lethal sophisticate (Shaw), smart and efficient and highly contagious (Vanessa Kirby as MI6 virus thief Hattie), and Black Superman (Idris Elba, who gives himself the name, but if it fits…).
Right. Enough with plot, on to stupifyingly illogical and imaginative action. Hobbs & Shaw offers quite a spectacle.
It bogs down when it gets away from the explosions, wheelies and punches. Whether devoting excessive time to pissing contests or to dysfunctional family backstories, director David Leitch—who proved his action mettle with Atomic Blonde—too often forgets that words are not this franchise’s strongest suit.
Still, there is something compelling about watching Black Superman V Samoan Thor. I don’t know that there’s enough here for a franchise springboard, but there’s plenty for a wasted afternoon.
https://youtu.be/HZ7PAyCDwEg
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Caught in a lie and feeling desperate?
There's always the Homer Simpson defense ("It takes two to lie - one to lie and one to listen"), or even the George Costanza ("It's not a lie if you believe it").
But with The Farewell, writer/director Lulu Wang finds poignant truths in an elaborate lie, speaking the universal language of "family crazy" while crafting an engaging cultural prism.
Inspired by an episode of the This American Life podcast, The Farewell unfolds through the view of Billi (Awkwafina), a Chinese American who follows her parents back to China after the news of her grandmother Nai Nai's terminal cancer diagnosis.
But Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao-priceless) is the only one who doesn't know how sick she is, and the extended family has concocted a ruse about a grandson's wedding to give everyone an excuse to come visit Nai Nai one last time.
Billi's parents (Tzi Ma and Diana Lin) are worried she'll end up giving the game away - and with good reason. Billi is not entirely on board for the "good lie," and this conflict of conscience is the vessel Wang steers to expose important cultural differences while she's getting solid laughs with all the family antics.
The lies -both big and small- pile up, all in service of the belief that one's life is part of a whole, and thus it is Nai Nai's family who must carry the emotional burden of her illness.
It is Awkwafina who carries the film. If you only know her as a comic presence (Ocean's 8, Crazy Rich Asians), prepare to be wowed. As our window into this push and pull of tradition in the modern world, she makes Billi a nuanced, relatable soul.
While Wang's script is sharp and insightful, her assured tone is even more beneficial. Even as the film feels effortlessly lived in, it never quite goes in directions you think it might. Wang doesn't stoop to going maudlin among all the whiffs of death, infusing The Farewell with an endless charm that's both revealing and familiar.
Funny, too. No lie.
https://youtu.be/RofpAjqwMa8
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Fast, brave and baffling, Tilman Singer’s experimental demon thriller Luz enters hot, exits quickly and leaves you puzzled. In a good way.
The film begins with a nightmarish vision leeched of color, as battered young cabbie Luz (a letter-perfect Luana Velis) tumbles into a banal police station lobby shouting about how the receptionist wants to live his life. Soon she’s seated in an equally bland hallway, mumbling blasphemies to herself in Spanish as two German police officers—one who doesn’t understand and one who refuses to translate—look on.
Meanwhile, in a dive bar across town…
It makes little sense to summarize the plot because the fairly slight premise unfolds in front of you, offering as many questions as answers. To spoil that seems pointless.
There is something fascinating happening in this film, though, and Singer has no real sense of urgency about clarifying what that is. Seedy, lifeless places become environments where those as baffled as we bear witness—or don’t—to a patient if tenacious courtship of sorts.
It all begins in dehumanizing but fascinating wide angle shots. Slowly, clip by clip, Singer draws us in closer to the diabolical unfolding in our midst. It’s the deconstruction of a possession film, a bare-bones experimental feature that hangs together because of its clever turns, solid performances and Singer’s own technical savvy with sound design.
Running about 70 minutes and boasting no more than 6 speaking roles, Luz is surrealism at its most basic, storytelling at its sparest.
https://youtu.be/zOJNMF_qGVU
by Christie Robb and Emmy Clifton, MaddWolf.com
During the recent heatwave as a bid to keep everyone entertained and out of the sun, I asked my upcoming Kindergartner, Emmy, to help me with my latest movie review.
Mom says…
Even a cup of ill-timed afternoon coffee was barely enough to keep me from nodding off during director Sergio Manifo’s animated adventure. The premise was interesting, centered around a teenage Leonardo Da Vinci who brings mechanical contraptions into being in 15th century Italy. But as we passed the 10 minute mark with no inciting incident, I realized we were in trouble.
Eventually we get it. Leo’s friend Lisa’s farm has been vandalized. The crops are destroyed. And without them, Lisa’s dad can’t pay the mortgage and she’ll have to be married off to the anemic son of their nobleman landlord.
The film has a little bit of everything: jokes that don’t land, phoned-in voice acting, questionable gender stereotypes (girls are described as “moody” and cry to get their way), characters who lack development, painful musical numbers that appear out of nowhere, exposition dumps delivered through dialogue, and a romance that makes Anakin and Padme’s in Attack of the Clones look nuanced.
But my favorite thing by far is the closing song. I’ll leave you with some of the lyrics:
When I am here with you
I’m a fish inside a creek
And I don’t know how to speak
Maybe a mobile phone would help
Kid says…
I enjoyed it more than the Little Mermaid, but less than Frozen. Leo was my favorite character. He did the fun stuff. Lisa, the girl, was ok. I’d watch it again. It was kind of scary in parts. Why does everything end up a skeleton in this movie?
Mom’s Verdict:
Emmy’s Verdict:
https://youtu.be/3vzfSqCIZZg
by Cat McAlpine, MaddWolf.com
On a hot summer day Cynthia (Jillian Bell) and Mary (Michaela Watkins) walk into an Alabama pawn shop with a sword to sell. Shop owner Mel (Marc Maron) listens in disbelief as the women explain: This isn’t just any sword. This Union officer’s sword, and its accompanying documents, can prove that the South actually won the Civil War.
Sword of Trust pokes at what and who we believe in, and why. What leads people to believe that the world is actually flat or the deep state is actively erasing battles from history books? How many times can we forgive someone before we simply can’t anymore? Filmed on location in Birmingham, the pace of the film matches the speed of summer in the south. No one moves too fast, talks too loud, or quite gets to the point.
Penned by Lynn Shelton (who also directed) and Mike O’Brien, the dialogue is almost too natural, suggesting that most of the script was largely improvised. The frame work is a little choppy, with a focus on Cynthia and Mary at the start that suggests more of an ensemble focus than is delivered.
As the action picks up Cynthia, Mary, Mel, and pawn shop assistant Nathaniel (Jon Bass, loveable) all warily agree to pile into the back of a moving van with an unknown destination.
“This is definitely how people die.”
“This is how individual people die. There’s four of us.”
Then, we’re hit with a momentum bait and switch. The longest scene of the film takes place in the back of the van where the characters explain exactly how they came to this point in their lives. This is when realize the real film is about Mel, and his ability to find satisfaction in life despite its disappointments.
As the emotional epicenter, Maron is a marvelous star. Not dissimilar from his performance in Netflix’s GLOW, Maron has the beautiful, stuttering delivery of a man who can admit his life is “tragic” without ever truly contemplating that reality. Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn’t rise to meet his performance.
The action is predictable and anticlimactic. Mel is worrying over bad decisions and a woman he’s still in love with, but his only onscreen interaction with Deirdre (Lynn Shelton, again) is early on and devoid of context. There are bright spots, like Nathaniel’s patient diligence in trying to explain to Cynthia how the world is actually flat, but the film doesn’t quite shine.
The Sword of Trust skims over the top of conspiracy theories and their cult followers. Every believer is either a backwoods idiot or a loveable idiot, both easily dismissed. There’s an opportunity to explore the cultural black holes that create these communities, but Mel isn’t really interested in them, so the narrative isn’t either.
Ultimately, this is a worthy effort to highlight the people and stories that find themselves in small, southern towns. But the film would’ve benefitted from either more evenly distributing its focus on the lives of all of its players or narrowing the narrative sharply on Mel.
https://youtu.be/vWmQyBjrbfU
" ["post_title"]=> string(108) "Movie Reviews: "Hobbs & Shaw," "The Farewell," "Luz," "Leo Da Vinci Mission Mona Lisa," "Sword of Trust"" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(0) "" ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["ping_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(91) "movie-reviews-hobbs-and-shaw-the-farewell-luz-leo-da-vinci-mission-mona-lisa-sword-of-trust" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2019-08-01 10:14:15" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-08-01 14:14:15" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(63) "https://wnnd-fm.sagacom.com/?post_type=saga_on_air&p=15194" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(11) "saga_on_air" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" } [8]=> object(WP_Post)#5306 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(15168) ["post_author"]=> string(2) "66" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2019-07-26 07:57:00" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-07-26 11:57:00" ["post_content"]=> string(3178) "
https://youtu.be/ELeMaP8EPAA"
["post_title"]=>
string(47) "Movie Review: "Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood""
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_status"]=>
string(7) "publish"
["comment_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["ping_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["post_password"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_name"]=>
string(42) "movie-review-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood"
["to_ping"]=>
string(0) ""
["pinged"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_modified"]=>
string(19) "2019-07-26 10:14:03"
["post_modified_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2019-07-26 14:14:03"
["post_content_filtered"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_parent"]=>
int(0)
["guid"]=>
string(63) "https://wnnd-fm.sagacom.com/?post_type=saga_on_air&p=15168"
["menu_order"]=>
int(0)
["post_type"]=>
string(11) "saga_on_air"
["post_mime_type"]=>
string(0) ""
["comment_count"]=>
string(1) "0"
["filter"]=>
string(3) "raw"
}
[9]=>
object(WP_Post)#5305 (24) {
["ID"]=>
int(15098)
["post_author"]=>
string(2) "66"
["post_date"]=>
string(19) "2019-07-06 10:29:57"
["post_date_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2019-07-06 14:29:57"
["post_content"]=>
string(5404) "
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Just when you thought it was safe to explore your Florida crawlspaces during a Category 5, here comes Crawl to remind us that while Sharknadoes put tongues in cheeks, Gatorcanes are looking to remove the whole head.
Haley Keller (Kaya Scodelario) is a University of Florida swimmer (a Gator!), which comes in pretty handy when she ignores evacuation orders to look for the father that always challenged her to do better in the pool.
Dave Keller (Barry Pepper) is lying injured in a soggy basement, and even before Haley finds him, she finds that they are not alone.
Director Alexandre Aja (High Tension, Piranha 3D, The Hills Have Eyes remake) utilizes the confines of the flooding house to fine effect. Walls, pipes and tight corners create natural barriers between gator and bait, but as the water level keeps rising, Aja finds plenty of room for simmering tension and effective jump scares.
Plus plenty of bloodletting. Oh, yes, people do get eaten.
This survival tale doesn't worry too much about suspending disbelief. It just keeps the water rising, the obstacles mounting (Haley's "You gotta be f-ing kidding me" speaks for all of us) and the visual effects nimble and nifty.
Writers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen get a bit too enamored with the father/daughter estrangements and swim team parlance ("You're faster than they are! Swim!"), but Scodelario provides a capable anchor, giving Haley authentic layers of toughness and grit.
Aja and the effects team do the rest, enough to make Crawl an often entertaining creature and bloody fun summer feature.
https://youtu.be/H6MLJG0RdDE
by Hope Madden
Dave Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani actually have more in common than you might think. Both are charming, funny, likable oddballs and both are outstanding on Twitter.
That last bit is less meaningful as they team up in the bromance romp Stuber.
Bautista plays Vic, a weirdly muscular LA cop. Nanjiani's Stu is an Uber driver. Vic has eye surgery the same day he gets a tip on a big drug deal going down. Unable to drive, he presses his Uber driver into involuntary service.
Hijinks...oh the hijinks.
The main problem with this movie is that it's idiotic.
A handful of other actors, including Natalie Morales and Mira Sorvino, sleepwalk through the most rote buddy cop movie you've ever seen basically to create a backdrop for Nanjiani to make being the voice of reason sound so funny.
He's basically playing Kumail Nanjiani, which is, of course, the role he was born to play.
Bautista has a tougher row to hoe. He can't sell the physical comedy, which is the point of his giant, bumbling, near-blind-and-yet-still-driving-and-shooting-weapons character.
Think Mr. Magoo meets Dirty Harry meets a bunch of steroids.
Dude, that should be comedy gold, especially in the hands of director Michael Dowse, whose classic hockey comedy Goon understood the charm of the blundering, violent dumbass.
Writer Tripper Clancy (that's a name!) doesn't help, as the only interesting ideas he has—the one he's hung his entire screenplay on—he stole outright from Deadpool.
Hey! You know what was funny? Deadpool.
It's too bad because both Nanjiani and Bautista deserve a lot better than this low-aiming and forgettable mess.
https://youtu.be/0Jt3g8CjX8k
" ["post_title"]=> string(32) "Movie Reviews: "Crawl," "Stuber"" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(0) "" ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["ping_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(26) "movie-reviews-crawl-stuber" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2019-07-12 10:33:45" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-07-12 14:33:45" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(63) "https://wnnd-fm.sagacom.com/?post_type=saga_on_air&p=15098" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(11) "saga_on_air" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" } } ["post_count"]=> int(10) ["current_post"]=> int(-1) ["before_loop"]=> bool(true) ["in_the_loop"]=> bool(false) ["post"]=> object(WP_Post)#5140 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(15418) ["post_author"]=> string(2) "66" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2019-09-12 09:31:58" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-09-12 13:31:58" ["post_content"]=> string(22876) "by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
"You don't have to believe me. I'm used to people not believing me."
"Destiny" (Constance Wu) is telling her tale to Elizabeth (Julia Stiles), a writer in the midst of a story on a gang of high-end strippers who were busted for drugging clients and fleecing them for thousands.
The disclaimer is a clear yet-not-overbearing sign that our window into the world of Hustlers may not necessarily be the most clear and reliable. It's one of many wise choices made by writer/director Lorene Scafaria in her adaptation of Jessica Pressler's article on "The Hustlers at Scores."
Wu is terrific as the naive newbie, overshadowed only by a completely magnetic Jennifer Lopez as Ramona, the stripping legend who teaches Destiny (and by extension, us) the ropes of spotting the highest-rolling Wall St. d-bags to milk for all they can.
But when the crash hits in '08, times get tough for everybody, and it isn't hard to justify hatching a plan to swindle the swindlers.
Scafaria ((Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, The Meddler) is not shy about the Scorsese influences, and seeing Will Ferrell and Adam McKay as executive producers makes The Big Short-syled humor all the more understandable.
No matter. This is still a supremely assured vision from Scafaria, cleverly constructed with visual flair, solid laughs, a sizzling pace and some truly memorable sequences.
One of the many great soundtrack choices comes right out of the gate, as Scafaria sets the stakes with Janet Jackson's spoken-word opening to "Control."
Who's got it? Who doesn't? And who's badass enough to go get it?
It's a wild, intoxicating high of girl power. And when it all comes crashing down, the moral ambiguities are scattered like dollar bills under the pole. As Ramona is quick to remind us, if there's money being thrown, there will always be people ready to dance.
https://youtu.be/nyQ9uGoHSwQ
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
In a surprisingly touching circle of art and life and imitating, Brittany Runs a Marathon charts its main narrative course with humor, charm and insight, while solid doses of humanity are never out of sight.
It may be the based-on-truth story of a woman taking control of her life, but in the process, it's also the story of longtime supporting actor not only taking the lead, but literally transforming before our eyes.
Writer/director Paul Downs Colaizzo, a playwright and TV director making his feature debut, drew inspiration from close friend Brittany O'Neil, who got her messy affairs in order by making some big changes.
One of those was a commitment to running, and a goal to complete the New York City marathon.
The film version finds Brittany Folger (Jillian Bell) out of shape and out of sorts. Allowing herself to be used by friends and randos, Brittany is the fat, funny sidekick who uses her quick, caustic wit as a suit of armor.
Early on, Brittany is just the sort of vessel Bell has used to steal big and small screen scenes for years. She nails the setup with hilarity, which isn't surprising. But the most impressive layer in Bell's performance is how she ups her game when the laughs don't come as often, dodging any false notes in Brittany's wake up call.
We knew Bell could do funny, but this is a performance full of drama that's equally impressive (if not more).
Credit Colaizzo for some equally deft maneuvering, making sure this is more complex that the standard "get hot to get happy" makeover fantasy you could hardly be blamed for expecting.
Brittany may joke about people who "missed the point of those Dove ads," but when she tells her attractive friend that "my life is just harder than yours," it rings with the capital that Colaizzo's script has earned.
The in-the-moment nods are numerous but not overdone, contrasting Brittany's self-loathing with the emptiness of comparing real life to social media staging or quick assumptions from afar.
As hard as it is for Brittany to stick with running, dropping the pounds is the easy part. She has to grow emotionally, starting with accepting the fact that she's worthy of the friendship her running pals (Michaela Watkins, Micah Stock) are offering.
And what's up with Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar- terrific), who pulls the night housesitting shift the same place Brittany handles the daytime? Is he stuck in the friend zone? Is she?
Sure, the film has a convenient plot turn or two, but this is some sneaky good crowd pleasing. Brittany Runs a Marathon ropes you with the comfort of formula, then dopes you with emotional complexities, warm sincerity and a knockout lead performance.
Winner winner sensible dinner.
https://youtu.be/Ks_HSj1UqKI
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Comparing most films to Pan’s Labyrinth would be setting a bar too high. Guillermo del Toro’s macabre fable of war and childhood delivers more magic, humanity and tragedy than any one film should be allowed.
And yet, it’s hard to watch Issa Lopez’s Tigers Are Not Afraid without thinking about little Ofelia, the fairies and the Pale Man.
Lopez’s fable of children and war brandishes the same themes as del Toro’s masterpiece, but grounds the magic with a rugged street style.
Tigers follows Estrella, a child studying fairy tales—or, she was until her school is temporarily closed due to the stray bullets that make it unsafe for students. As Estrella and her classmates hide beneath desks to avoid gunfire, her teacher hands her three broken pieces of chalk and tells her these are her three wishes.
But wishes never turn out the way you want them to.
There is an echo through Latin American horror that speaks to the idea of a disposable population. You find it in Jorge Michel Grau’s brilliant 2010 cannibal horror We Are What We Are and again in Emiliano Rocha Minter’s 2016 taboo-buster, We Are the Flesh.
Lopez amplifies that voice with a film that feels horrifying in its currency and devastating in the way it travels with the most vulnerable of those discarded people.
Estrella is befriended by other orphans in her city, each aching with the loss of parents and each on the move to escape the dangers facing the powerless.
Though Tigers bears the mark of a del Toro – Labyrinth as well as The Devi’s Backbone – it can’t quite reach his level of sorrowful lyricism. It makes up for that with the gut punch of modernity. Though this ghost story with tiny dragons and stuffed tigers is darkly fanciful, it’s also surprisingly clear-eyed in its view of the toll the drug war takes on the innocent.
It’s Latin American horror at its best.
https://youtu.be/KyoE0mSJXO8
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
You may have heard that Linda Ronstadt can't sing anymore, her incredible instrument silenced by Parkinson's disease. But Ronstadt's harmonies with a nephew in The Sound of My Voice are gentle and effective, and rendered more bittersweet by her quick, self-deprecating dismissal.
"This isn't really singing."
The ironic truth in this engaging documentary is that the sound of her spoken voice is what gives the film the warmth it needs to register as more than just a big screen fan letter.
Ronstadt initially balked at the pitch by directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Howl, Lovelace) but they won her over with a promise to let her tell the story and define its terms.
So while we don't get any juicy intimacies or sordid details, we do get some fantastic highlights from her archives and a unique, first-person perspective of being a queen in a king's game.
For anyone under 40, the film is also a great intro to one of the most successful female singers in history. I know Taylor Swift is great and all, kids, but in the 1970s, her name was Linda Ronstadt.
An Arizona native who was raised on a multitude of musical styles, Ronstadt came to L.A. as a teen. After first raising interest and eyebrows as the defiant girl singer not wanting to be tied down to just one lover on the Stone Poneys' 1967 hit "Different Drum," Ronstadt's 70s solo success reached unprecedented levels for a female artist.
With hits on the pop, R&B and country charts, a string of platinum albums and magazine covers, she was everywhere. Later decades brought torch song projects with Nelson Riddle, a starring role in Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, a record-breaking Spanish language album paying tribute to her father's heritage, and forming a legendary country trio with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.
It is truly an incredible career, and reminding us of that fact seems to be goal number one for Epstein and Friedman. Their mission is more than accomplished, and with Ronstadt herself as the guide, it's like getting a backlot studio tour from Spielberg.
You hear wonderful anecdotes about how Ronstadt handled sexism both systemic and casual (former boyfriend J.D. Souther asked her to cook him dinner - she handed him a PB&J), how her backing band left to start a little combo called the Eagles and how none of the successes could quell the nagging feeling that she was never good enough.
She was. The Sound of My Voice is all the proof you need.
https://youtu.be/eDMYAsu5PvI
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Have you ever noticed how adorable Browns fans are during pre-season every year? Every year! There is always reason for optimism.
That’s how I feel about filmmakers with the “haunted house attraction that’ll really kill you” premise. Year after year (The Houses October Built, 2014; 31, 2016; The Houses October Built 2, 2017; Hell Fest, 2018) somebody wheels out the stinky old corpse of an idea and says, “This year, we’ll get it right!”
The 2019 attempt belongs to writers/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who struck silent film gold last year with the screenplay for A Quiet Place. (In retrospect, maybe we didn’t give co-writer/director John Krasinski enough credit for that one.)
Haunt follows a handful of college students seeking thrills on Halloween. They stumble upon an isolated haunted house attraction—with not one single visitor. On Halloween night. Kids! Come on! Clearly it’s either the lamest thing on earth or it will kill you. This isn’t rocket science.
And yet, they give up their cell phones, sign some waivers and enter.
Katie Stevens is Harper, damaged but mainly wholesome brunette and center of gravity for the group. Will Brittain is Nathan, pre-requisite “will they or won’t they” nice fella who sees past Harper’s prickly exterior.
In truth, the actors playing the six gullible youths all perform above expectation and, mercifully, Beck and Woods choose not to subject us to the couple that just can’t keep their hands to themselves.
Made sensibly and economically, Haunt sticks to what it knows and focuses on what it came to do. Gaps in logic are few (they’re there, but they’re not distracting). One or two of the kills offer intrigue and the villains are, if not especially impressive, at least kind of fun.
It's adequate. Unlike the Browns. The Browns are going all the way this year. No doubt. No doubt about it.
https://youtu.be/61KqbDkYK_w
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
It is tough to find a fresh direction to take fiction published 201 years ago, let alone a tale already made into countless films. Is there a new way—or reason—to look at the Frankenstein fable?
Writer/director/horror favorite Larry Fessenden thinks so. He tackles the myth, as well as a culture of greed and toxic masculinity, with his latest, Depraved.
Adam (a deeply sympathetic Alex Breaux) is kind of an act of catharsis for Henry (David Call). A PTSD-suffering combat medic, Henry is so interested in finding a way to bring battlefield fatalities back to life that he doesn’t even question where his Big Pharma partner Polidori (Joshua Leonard, in another excellent genre turn) gets his pieces and parts.
Here’s a question that’s plagued me since I read Shelley’s text in 8th grade. Why take parts of cadavers? Why not bring one whole dude back and save all that time and stitching effort? Frank Henenlotter (Frankenhooker) and Lucky McKee (May) found answers to that question. Fessenden isn’t worried about it.
He’s more interested in illuminating the way a culture is represented in its offspring. Pour all your own ugly tendencies, insecurities and selfish behaviors into your creation and see what that gets you.
Fessenden isn’t subtle about the problems he sees in society, nor vague about their causes. Depraved is the latest in a host of genre films pointing fingers at the specific folks who have had the power to cause all the problems that are now coming back to bite us in the ass.
It’s the white guys with money because, well, because it is.
Along with Leonard’s oily approach and Breaux’s tenderness, the film boasts solid supporting work from Chloe Levine (The Transfiguration, Ranger) and especially Addison Timlin, who is great in a very small role.
There is a sloppy subtext here, charming in its refusal to be tidy, about the man Adam used to be (or one of them), the girl he didn’t really appreciate, and the way, deep down, a mildly douchy guy can learn a lesson about self-sacrifice.
In its own cynical way, Depraved does offer a glimmer of hope for mankind. Fessenden doesn’t revolutionize the genre or say anything new, though, but you won’t leave the film wishing Shelley’s beast would just stay dead.
https://youtu.be/T1QwpdU39kk
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Falling somewhere between David Lynch and Anna Biller in the under-charted area where the boldly surreal meets the colorfully feminist, writer/director Jennifer Reeder’s Knives and Skin offers a hypnotic look at Midwestern high school life.
When Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) goes missing, carefully erected false fronts start crumbling all over town. Cheerleaders take a harder look at football players. Football players cry in their Mustangs. Goth girls fondle pink dresses. Pregnant waitresses bleed at the kitchen sink.
And everyone sings impossibly appropriate Eighties alt hits acapella. Even the dead.
Knives and Skin’s pulpy noir package lets Reeder explore what it means to navigate the world as a female. As tempting as it is to pigeonhole the film as Lynchian, Reeder’s metaphors, while fluid and eccentric, are far more pointed than anything you’ll find in Twin Peaks.
She looks at relationships between mothers and daughters, as daughters toe the line between acceptable and unacceptable levels of conformity and mothers bear the toll exacted by years of fitting in.
Reeder blurs that line between popularity and ostracism, characters finding common ground as they address the question: Are you a whore or a tease?
The ire is not one-dimensional. Though toxic masculinity requires a price, the males in Middle River, even the worst among them, are as sympathetic and as damaged by expectations as anybody.
Reeder’s peculiar dialogue finds its ideal voice with Grace Smith as Joanna Kitzmiller, a jaded feminist and budding entrepreneur. Likewise, Marika Englehardt and Tim Hopper bring extraordinary nuance and sympathy to what could have been campy characters.
This cockeyed lens for the middle American pressure cooker that is high school suggests exhilarating possibilities, but does so with a melancholy absurdity that recognizes the impossibility of it all.
And in the end, all the Middle River Beavers stare longingly at the highway that leads out of town.
https://vimeo.com/325181448
" ["post_title"]=> string(159) "Movie Reviews: "Hustlers," "Brittany Runs a Marathon," "Tigers Are Not Afraid," "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice," "Haunt," "Depraved," "Knives and Skin"" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(0) "" ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["ping_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(128) "movie-reviews-brittany-runs-a-marathon-tigers-are-not-afraid-linda-ronstadt-the-sound-of-my-voice-haunt-depraved-knives-and-skin" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2019-09-13 10:16:56" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2019-09-13 14:16:56" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(63) "https://wnnd-fm.sagacom.com/?post_type=saga_on_air&p=15418" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(11) "saga_on_air" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" } ["comment_count"]=> int(0) ["current_comment"]=> int(-1) ["found_posts"]=> int(0) ["max_num_pages"]=> int(0) ["max_num_comment_pages"]=> int(0) ["is_single"]=> bool(false) ["is_preview"]=> bool(false) ["is_page"]=> bool(false) ["is_archive"]=> bool(true) ["is_date"]=> bool(false) ["is_year"]=> bool(false) ["is_month"]=> bool(false) ["is_day"]=> bool(false) ["is_time"]=> bool(false) ["is_author"]=> bool(true) ["is_category"]=> bool(false) ["is_tag"]=> bool(false) ["is_tax"]=> bool(false) ["is_search"]=> bool(false) ["is_feed"]=> bool(false) ["is_comment_feed"]=> bool(false) ["is_trackback"]=> bool(false) ["is_home"]=> bool(false) ["is_privacy_policy"]=> bool(false) ["is_404"]=> bool(false) ["is_embed"]=> bool(false) ["is_paged"]=> bool(true) ["is_admin"]=> bool(false) ["is_attachment"]=> bool(false) ["is_singular"]=> bool(false) ["is_robots"]=> bool(false) ["is_favicon"]=> bool(false) ["is_posts_page"]=> bool(false) ["is_post_type_archive"]=> bool(false) ["query_vars_hash":"WP_Query":private]=> string(32) "434195d09a0c7220b9c94b1ee3bf7062" ["query_vars_changed":"WP_Query":private]=> bool(true) ["thumbnails_cached"]=> bool(false) ["allow_query_attachment_by_filename":protected]=> bool(false) ["stopwords":"WP_Query":private]=> NULL ["compat_fields":"WP_Query":private]=> array(2) { [0]=> string(15) "query_vars_hash" [1]=> string(18) "query_vars_changed" } ["compat_methods":"WP_Query":private]=> array(2) { [0]=> string(16) "init_query_flags" [1]=> string(15) "parse_tax_query" } ["query_cache_key":"WP_Query":private]=> string(0) "" } -->