Category Archives: 2024

Back to Black

Back to Black      2 stars

One genre of film that I really like is movies about the making of music. These are the ones where we see the process of coming up with and writing a good song. They can be either fictional or about a real artist. Unfortunately, we don’t get that in the new Sam Taylor-Johnson biopic called Back to Black, the movie about the rise and tragic end to British pop star Amy Winehouse (starring Marisa Abela) who died of alcohol poisoning back in 2011. Instead, the movie focuses mainly on her troubled romance to husband Blake (Jack O’Connell) who was addicted to drugs and alcohol and played a major part in allowing Winehouse to share in the addiction. We do get several stage performances of Winehouse and her disagreements with the record producers. (She could certainly stand up for herself.) But I didn’t see enough of her composing music and feeling it in the process, other than one scene early in the movie. Abela does a decent job portraying the singer, even using her own voice in some of the songs. (It’s unlike Elvis then where Austin Butler only did lip syncing.) Much better examples of artist biopics were Rocketman (Elton John), Bohemian Rhapsody (Freddy Mercury) and even Ray (Ray Charles). We also get too many scenes of her getting more tattoos, but we do see how that enormous signature beehive hairdo came to be. If you saw the documentary, Amy, from 2015 you would see some significant details that are left out of Back to Black. The movie treats her father, Mitch (Eddie Marsan) far too sympathetically as he in reality only returned to Amy’s life after she became famous and did little to help her out of her addiction. Her record producer and band members are treated as mere background characters, and her bodyguard is left out altogether, even though in the movie she is hounded by the paparazzi. In the end the movie is reduced to one about a bad romance and I think we already have plenty of those.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga              5 stars

Mad Max. The name conjures up visions of gangs on roaring motorcycles and tricked out old cars racing through the desert wasteland after a nuclear holocaust has destroyed most of civilization. This is the world first created by George Miller back in 1979 with the release of Mad Max. Now we have Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the fifth installment of the series and it is as full of action and mayhem as any of the others. Plus, we get a fuller view of the life of Furiosa, the woman who raged across the desert against a murderous gang in the movie Fury Road that starred Charlise Theron nine years ago. Furiosa gives us the young hero’s origin story told over five acts and two and a half hours of car and motorbike chases with death defying stunts and murderous mayhem with some of the weirdest looking odd balls we’ve encountered since Fury Road. And it is the first time that Mad Max, last played by Tom Hardy, does not appear in the movie. For the first hour we follow the journey of the young girl, Furiosa (Alyla Browne) who is abducted from The Green Place, a sort of paradise in the desert, by a group of biker degenerates and brought back to the base of their outlaw gang, but only after Furiosa’s mother tracks them and kills almost all of them. There, she meets the leader of the gang, a self-absorbed psychopath named Dementus (Chris Hemsworth playing the villain in a most unusual casting choice). Dementus kills the mother, giving the young Furiosa the rage that so defines her character in the times to come. In this society, located in the Wastelands of Australia, the various gangs are led by warlords who rule cruelly over their subjects. They live in places with names like The Citadel, Bullettown and Gasland. These characters have some very descriptive names like The People Eater, Rictus Erectus and Scrotus. Eventually, Furiosa is traded to one of these warlords where she is to live with the leader’s harem of women. There, she learns the ways of the gangs, disguised as a boy, taking on a new role as a valuable sidekick to Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke). The adult Furiosa is played by Anya Taylor-Joy, the striking model from Last Night in Soho and The Queen’s Gambit. Taylor-Joy has an intensity in the role that can be seen in her face as she methodically goes about making repairs on the war-rig, stares down her enemies or puts a bullet in them. One feels the pain she goes through and can then better understand the actions of her future self in Fury Road. George Miller said that it was after seeing Anya Taylor-Joy in Last Night in Soho, that he knew he had found the young Furiosa. Taylor-Joy can seemingly easily handle maneuvering a car in the desert though she says she has never had a driver’s license. The action set pieces as imagined by George Miller are astounding in their execution. In one sequence we see a chrome plated diesel truck defended by the white War Boys from an attacking horde of bikers, some of them on hang gliders. One by one each attacker is picked off by physical assault, gunshot or being crushed by the truck’s wheels. This scene lasts probably fifteen minutes and is accompanied by a heart pounding steady beat the entire time. Such scenes are designed to get the viewers’ adrenaline pumping and they succeed. This is just one of the many thrilling action scenes brought to the screen. I understand that the story was actually written by Miller before Fury Road was filmed and that it took ten years of preparation to assemble the collection of hot rods, bikes and trucks to make such a wonder of a film. If you are a fan of action movies, this is the one you should not miss this summer.

I Saw the TV Glow

I Saw the TV Glow            4 stars

One of the movies featured at Sundance made its way to the theaters so I took in one of the festival’s favorites by watching I Saw the TV Glow. This teen horror about fandom of a cult TV show is the second feature from writer/director Jane Schoenbrun and is unique with its style and presentation. (Her first movie was the horror film We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.) It has the potential to be a cult classic and is meant to appeal to young audiences who see themselves as loners and misfits but find comradery in a mysterious TV show. In the movie we meet Owen (Ian Forman), a middle school student who lives with his parents and has no friends at school. One day while accompanying his mom (Danielle Deadwyler of Till and The Harder They Fall) to a voting booth, he spots Maddie (Brigette Lundy-Paine (Bill and Ted Face the Music)), an older girl, also a loner, reading an episode guide for her favorite TV show called The Pink Opaque. Owen has heard of the show before but could never watch it because it is on Saturday evenings after his bedtime. (The movie is set in the nineties before streaming and DVRs, so most TV shows are watched live.) The show is very campy with poor special effects but is popular with young audiences. It is about two teenage girls (actors Helena Howard and Lindsey Jordan) who meet at Sleepaway camp and become friends though they live far apart from one another. They have psychic powers enabling them to communicate with each other. Each episode they fight against the monster of the week that always appears in ridiculous looking costumes. (Think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except on a much lower budget.) The monsters are controlled by a mysterious being called Mr. Melancholy who looks like the moon and is out to destroy the girls. Owen and Maddie aren’t close, (She is gay, and Owen isn’t sure what he is.) but they bond over the show after Owen sneaks over to her house to watch it. Then Maddie provides Owen with VHS tapes of episodes so that he can watch it on his own. A couple of years later Owen is still watching the show but he is then played by Justice Smith (The American Society of Magical Negroes). (In a note of irony, the high school they attend is Void High School (VHS).) It is only then after Owen’s mother passes away, Maddie mysteriously disappears with her TV set on fire in her back yard and The Pink Opaque is cancelled after five seasons, that we get the sense there is more to the TV show than we realized. The teens find that their very lives are intertwined with the show, and they can’t separate their lives from fiction. The neon colors and disturbing images of I Saw the TV Glow are designed to give us a sense of escapism, to get away from reality and not think about the troubles of our lives. Goth style music and dark unkept rooms aid in the nightmarish feel of the whole experience. I Saw the TV Glow may be a new cult movie that today’s Gen Z will relate to for years to come. I would like to see what Schoenbrun will bring us next.

The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy       4 stars

The summer blockbuster season may have started a bit early with the release of The Fall Guy, directed by David Leitch (Bullet Train, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw). The action comedy starring Ryan Gosling as stuntman Colt Seavers and Emily Blunt as movie director Jody is designed as a tribute to the stuntmen who make action movies fun to watch. Part of the fun is watching Colt prepare for each shot and endure one take after another of getting blown up and burned. In addition, Gosling shows that he is made to be a comedic leading man whether he is crying to a Taylor Swift song or giving one liners while taking punishment from the bad guys (of which there are plenty). The pair of Gosling and Blunt work comedy gold in their scenes together with dueling dialogue especially in an early scene when Jody questions Colt about his character’s motivation in front of the entire production crew. Remember that last summer Gosling was discovering his manliness as Ken in Barbie and Blunt was enduring marriage to Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer. (It is clear that Gosling has not lost his physique since Barbie.) The premise is that Colt, the main stuntman for action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), returns from an injury to work on a movie in Australia being directed by his crush, Jody in her first directing opportunity. Her big budget movie is a sort of Mad Max action film with some fearsome looking space aliens and big explosions. During production, the movie producer (Hannah Waddingham) approaches Colt, telling him that the star, Ryder has gone missing, and Colt must track him down. And with what is an obvious MacGuffin, he must not tell Jody about the missing star. (A MacGuffin is a device that keeps the plot moving but may not make any sense.) When Colt discovers a dead body, he soon realizes that he is in over his head and he must face off against multiple villains in car chases and fight scenes, something he is surprisingly good at. After that the plot loses all credibility and little about the story makes any sense. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying it. I finally gave up on trying to make sense of it. But I did enjoy the fight scenes that included Stephanie Hsu (Everything, Everywhere, All at Once) as an assistant fighting a villain at the wheel of a large truck a la Indiana Jones. (And then there is the dog that helps Colt in fights, while only responding to commands in French.) The level of action is high like Leitch’s earlier movie, Bullet Train. It slows down a bit when Blunt shares the screen, with her contributing to the comedic nature of the movie. The score is very upbeat including a few renditions of I Was Made for Loving You Baby performed by both Yungblud and Kiss. So, turn off your brain for two hours and enjoy some real mind-blowing action.

Mean Girls

Mean Girls          3 stars

Twenty years after watching high school girls battle for dominance in their pack in Mean Girls, the movie is remade in musical form with the same title, but this time it is updated for Gen Z to include the new weapon of social media and cell phones used in the art of put downs. Mean Girls is a movie based on a Broadway musical based on a movie based on a book. The same comedy genius, Tina Fey is again behind the writing for the film, but while funny, the magic of the original movie starring Lindsay Logan as Cady Heron, the homeschooled girl raised in Africa and transplanted to North Shore High School doesn’t quite carry through. We get almost exactly the same story with a group of high school mean girls called the Plastics who are determined to be feared by most while maintaining their exclusive club, only with the musical numbers from the stage production transferred to the big screen. There are some very well performed numbers like the emotional “What’s Wrong with Me” and an elaborately choreographed number involving what seems like hundreds of students in the school hallways. There are also times when the songs make too much use of the students’ cell phones, so you end up with a montage of TikTok like videos. Tina Fey and Tim Meadows do a good job reprising their roles from the first film as Ms. Norbury and Mr. Duvall. (I really enjoy seeing Tina Fey as a Calculus teacher.) The cameo roles of Jenna Fischer, Busy Phillips and Jon Hamm were barely noticeable. But be sure to watch closely and you will see Lindsay Lohan as the Mathletes moderator. Angourie Rice does an admirable job in the Lindsay Lohan role of Cady, the girl who forgets who her friends are when doing the full mean girl act. The best performance of the film must go to Renée Rapp as Regina George. She really makes mean look good as she instills fear with a stare throughout the school as she walks through the hallways. She can certainly sing, never missing a note. Rapp is continuing the role from the Broadway production, and we can see why. She is perfect in the role first performed by Rachel McAdams. (She has been making the TV talk show circuit for the past year or so and recently even made an appearance on Saturday Night Live.) If you really like musicals, you should see Mean Girls. Otherwise, I recommend going back and watching the original starring Lindsay Lohan with its message of staying true to your friends.

Sasquatch Sunset

Sasquatch Sunset             3 stars

I first heard about Sasquatch Sunset at Sundance where it premiered earlier this year. There was a lot of talk about this movie which follows a family of Sasquatches in the North American wilderness, so I naturally had to see it when it was released in theaters. I know that I previously said The Beast was the most unusual movie of the year so far, but I now must award that title to Sasquatch Sunset. This movie by the Zellner brothers (Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter and Damsel) imagines what it would be like to observe a quartet of these mysterious creatures in their natural habitat, following them for a full year. The movie is imaginative and frequently comical but is a little short on plot. But you must be warned that many filmgoers reportedly walked out early in the film. The actors are covered head to massive toe in hairy costumes that are certainly convincing, communicating through grunts and waling. The movie has the distinction of having a complete absence of dialogue in any language. Without getting too graphic, imagine going to the zoo and observing monkey behavior for a whole day and you might begin to understand what you will be in for. At some point the creatures engage in just about every bodily function you can imagine including sasquatch sex and childbirth. (There is even the rebuff of sexual advances.) As in their previous films, the Zellner’s provide plenty of comedic moments as well such as an encounter with a turtle and the consequences of consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms. This odd family consists of a papa sasquatch (Nathan Zellner), a mama (Riley Keough), and two juveniles (Jesse Eisenberg and Christophe Zajac-Denek) who spend their days munching on leaves and berries and encountering various wildlife in their lush green environment. There are times when you feel they are marveling at the natural world around them by their staring and the expression on their faces. (One of them struggles with the concept of counting when he looks at the stars or a handful of berries but finds he can’t express the idea of numbers.) We also sense that they were once part of a larger community when they try to signal others by pounding on trees with sticks and then listen for a response that will never come. Combine this with their reaction when encountering evidence of humans and you get a feeling of doom for this hairy bunch. Sasquatch Sunset is certainly not for everyone but can be a fun way to spend an hour and a half.

God Save Texas

God Save Texas: The Price of Oil. 4 stars

God Save Texas is a series of episodics produced by Richard Linklater with three of them showing at Sundance. All are directed by native Texans and reflect some subject about conditions in Texas that affect the entire country. The Price of Oil was directed by Alex Stapleton who is from the Houston area and is Black. The focus of the episode is on the black population of Texas, their contribution to development of the oil industry, and the marginalization they have suffered for its profits. The doc goes back to the 1830’s when Texas won its independence but followed the practice of slavery. It shows how blacks were left out of the history of the state. With the discovery of oil in the early twentieth century, blacks did not receive their share of employment in the oil industry, but have suffered from the environmental dangers of having the refineries placed next to their neighborhoods. The director made it personal by showing how some of her own relatives were impacted by these practices. The episode was largely made during the pandemic. I recommend seeing the series. It was inspired by the book God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State by Lawrence Wright.

Between the Temples

Between the Temples 4 stars

I happened to accidentally find one of the better comedies of the festival with director Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples. Jewish Cantor Ben (Jason Schwartzman of Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited) has a lot on his mind. It has been a year since his wife died tragically and he is living with his two moms (Caroline Aaron and Dolly de Leon (who was brilliant as the Philippino worker on the doomed luxury yacht in Triangle of Sadness). He is depressed and is unable to sing in temple. And one of his mothers is trying to set him up on dates. But he is still guiding his bat mitzvah students as they prepare their studies. Then he gets a new student in Carla (a hilarious Carol Kane (Annie Hall and Taxi)), a widowed woman in her seventies who never had her bat mitzvah before and wants to correct that omission. Only there is something familiar about her as Ben remembers her as his music teacher when he was a boy. So Ben must navigate this new situation while not fully revealing the circumstances to all the interested parties. It’s a sweet screwball comedy with perfect leads in Schwartzman and Kane. I found it similar in style to Moonstruck especially when it came to a certain dinner scene with all the characters gathered together. The director and writers were present for Q & A and told how a real story provided the idea for the movie’s premise. We also learned that they did three versions of the final scene over two days. Nathan Silver is an accomplished director with many credits only I was unfamiliar with his movies. Maybe I will see more of them now.

Girls Will Be Girls

Girls Will Be Girls 4 1/2 stars

In Girls Will Be Girls we find a coming of age story set in India in the Himalaya mountains. In a strict boarding school, Mira has just earned the title and responsibilities of Head Prefect. She has the pressures of keeping her grades up and dealing with a strict mother, but then a new boy arrives at the school that takes an interest in her. It’s a story of discovering desire and romance for the first time from first time writer-director Shuchi Talati. Mira has to be very careful about what she reveals to her mother about the relationship, but the mother takes an interest in the boy’s wellbeing too, setting up a conflict between mother and daughter. It is a well told story done with slow building tension. Both of the young actors were present for the Q & A. It was one of the best movies of the fest I have seen so far.

Love Machina

Love Machina 4 stars

How would you like to transfer the consciousness of a loved one into a robot so that they could continue to exist and be with you after they passed away? It sounds unimaginable but that is the aim of futurists Martina and Bina Rothblatt. Marina has been conducting this project since 2006 so that his beloved wife can continue to love as a machine. The robot consists of only a head and can listen and speak with the help of AI and it is named Bina48. Martina has been gathering data that defines Bina’s thoughts and digitizing them. The result at this point is regarded as a simulation but it is quite remarkable what has been accomplished so far. It seems like the stuff of science fiction, and would seem to be something we couldn’t have dreamed of only a few years ago. The movie presents other great advancements that have been made in technology recently and shows the hope that we have for the future. It gives a very positive picture of what the future holds.