This Is a Movie Review: ‘The Mummy’ Reboot is Lifeless Except for the Rare Moments When It Embraces Its Goofy Side

June 9, 2017

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This review was originally posted on News Cult in June 2017.

Starring: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson, Russell Crowe

Director: Alex Kurtzman

Running Time: 110 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Getting Ur Freak On with Death

Release Date: June 9, 2017

I laughed derisively when the Universal globe logo spun around and gave way to the “Dark Universe” logo, but the joke was on me, as the best parts of this new interlocking cinematic franchise are the ones setting up its upcoming entries. More fundamentally, the reason the joke was on me was because I held out hope throughout The Mummy that something unique or especially thrilling might happen.

As far as reboots go, once again resurrecting the Egyptian tomb-dwellers is far from an outrage. This undead crew is part of the cinematic and larger cultural collective unconscious, so there is plenty of room for new generations of storytellers to add their spin. But this particular version of The Mummy is maddening because it never establishes a convincing reason for why it should exist in the first place.

There is a fairly clean setup in which the Ancient Egyptian Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) makes a deal with Set, the god of Death, but then is defeated and laid to rest thousands of years to become the title villain. Then Tom Cruise swoops in as low-rent Indiana Jones Nick Morton and slips open her tomb, thus unleashing the Pandora’s box of the Dark Universe. So far, so reasonable. But then the story gets bogged down in mythical mumbo-jumbo about daggers and prophecies and whatever. Universal so obviously wants to copy the success of Marvel, but it is not going to do that by following its worst habit of focusing way too much on the MacGuffins. Are there mythological nerds out there who actually care about this minutiae?

All this plot-centric gobbledygook can be forgiven if The Mummy can provide the genre thrills, but the results in that department are mostly meh. Cruise is as game as always, but the action, while competently shot and coherently edited, is not especially memorable. The one mildly saving grace comes from the stabs at horror. Boutuella’s snake-like body and shadowy face provide a canvas for some decently scary images, as her pupils split into two pairs and her corpse decomposes into a dusty pile of bones (reminiscent of the effects of drinking from the wrong grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).

Alas, that is all inconsequential, because the real purpose of The Mummy is prologue to a series of tales in which Dr. Jekyll is the de facto Nick Fury. Russell Crowe plays the good doctor with a motivation apparently split between defeating monsters or assembling them. That dichotomy is potentially interesting and fits the character, but it is a distraction from the actual movie it is in.

At the beginning of this review, I said that I was somehow excited for the rest of the Dark Universe, but mulling everything over, I should probably temper my anticipation, though I still hold out a smidgen hope. The Mummy’s conclusion indicates that the next entries might actually kick back and have more fun by giving extra screen time to characters like Morton’s partner Chris Vail, brought to screeching, howling life by Jake Johnson (New Girl fans will be confused every time he calls Cruise “Nick”). For its lead character, The Mummy could have really used with more off-kilter energy. Cruise can be edgy, but he is too straightforward to match the hysterical, almost Abbott and Costello-esque vibe that Johnson employs to intermittently resuscitate this DOA franchise to life.

The Mummy is Recommended If You Like: Tom Cruise-related schadenfreude, Jake Johnson (though you must be able to endure long stretches without him)

Grade: 2 out of 5 Decompositions

This Is a Movie Review: The Partnership Between ‘Megan Leavey’ and Bomb-Sniffing Rex is One for the Ages, Elevating an Otherwise Ho-Hum Biopic

June 7, 2017

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This review was originally posted on News Cult in June 2017.

Starring: Kate Mara, Edie Falco, Ramón Rodríguez, Common, Tom Felton, Bradley Whitford

Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite

Running Time: 116 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Medium-Grade Explosives Injuries

Release Date: June 9, 2017

There is plenty of research and apocryphal evidence suggesting that dogs experience genuine emotions and form interspecies bonds much the same way that humans do. This always comes with the caveat that we can never exactly know the accuracy of those conclusions, as none of us has ever literally been inside a dog’s head. Most of the research I have encountered has included little, if any, reference to military bomb-sniffing dogs, which is a bit of a lost opportunity as that high pressure occupation surely has a noteworthy effect on the canine psyche. But at least now we can examine the compelling evidence of Marine Corporal Megan Leavey and her dog Rex.

Megan Leavey is a fairly straightforward military story, but it distinguishes itself with its high-class casting and its crew of sniffers. Kate Mara is sufficiently lived-in as the title character, imbuing actual personality into voiceover about how she needs to escape her boring New York town. As her parents, Edie Falco and Bradley Whitford do as much as they can with underwritten, limited screen time. And a fellow soldier (Ramón Rodríguez) strikes up decently sizzling chemistry with Leavey, despite the extent of their attraction consisting of an opposites attract thing where she’s a Yankees fan, and he’s a Mets fan.

But forget about the humans, we’re here to talk about Rex! We can also discuss Megan a little, so long as she bonds sufficiently with Rex. Obviously, she does, given the film’s whole premise. The two save a lot of lives in their bomb detection efforts and in the process grow as close as any human and dog experiencing intense stress together could.

After retiring from the service, Leavey fights through bureaucracy all the way to the U.S. Senate to change Rex’s “unadoptable” classification. It is not hard to get the audience on your side in such a mission, but it can be challenging to avoid schmaltz. This film makes you tear up, but it also earns your respect. Megan enters therapy to deal with her PTSD and her grief over missing Rex, and both ailments are treated with the dignity that they deserve. Their ultimate reunion is affecting not just because it is always adorable to cuddle a dog, but because Mara thoroughly convinces us that Leavey really did learn how to love from Rex.

Megan Leavey is Recommended If You Like: The Hurt Locker, American Sniper, Homeward Bound

Grade: 3 out of 5 Good Boys

 

Billboard Hot Rock Songs – Week of June 17, 2017

June 7, 2017

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Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart, and then I rearrange the top 25 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 25, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Imagine Dragons – “Believer”
2. Linkin Park ft. Kiiara – “Heavy”
3. twenty one pilots – “Heathens”
4. Imagine Dragons – “Thunder”
5. Rag’n’Bone Man – “Human”
6. Lord Huron – “The Night We Met”
7. Portugal. The Man – “Feel It Still”
8. The Revivalists – “Wish I Knew You”
9. The Allman Brothers Band – “Midnight Rider”
10. Imagine Dragons – “Whatever It Takes”
11. Paramore – “Hard Times”
12. Soundgarden – “Black Hole Sun”
13. Lana Del Rey ft. The Weeknd – “Lust for Life”
14. Ocean Park Standoff – “Good News”
15. Foo Fighters – “Run”
16. Audioslave – “Like a Stone”
17. Electric Light Orchestra – “Mr. Blue Sky”
18. Fleetwood Mac – “The Chain”
19. Bleachers – “Don’t Take the Money”
20. The Allman Brothers Band – “Ramblin’ Man”
21. The Allman Brothers Band – “Melissa”
22. Papa Roach – “Help”
23. Cold War Kids – “Love is Mystical
24. Sir Sly – “High”
25. The Gregg Allman Band – “I’m No Angel”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. The Chain
2. Like a Stone
3. Human
4. Mr. Blue Sky
5. Ramblin’ Man
6. High
7. Black Hole Sun
8. Run
9. Melissa
10. Feel It Still
11. Midnight Rider
12. Love is Mystical
13. Hard Times
14. I’m No Angel
15. Lust for Life

Billboard Hot 20 – Week of June 17, 2017

June 6, 2017

jmunney Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot 100, Music , , , Leave a comment

Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot 100, and then I rearrange the top 20 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 20, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee ft. Justin Bieber – “Despacito”
2. Bruno Mars – “That’s What I Like”
3. DJ Khaled ft. Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper, and Lil Wayne – “I’m the One”
4. Kendrick Lamar – “Humble.”
5. Ed Sheeran – “Shape of You”
6. Future – “Mask Off”
7. Zedd and Alessia Cara – “Stay”
8. The Chainsmokers and Coldplay – “Something Just Like This”
9. Lil Uzi Vert – “XO Tour Llif3”
10. Post Malone ft. Quavo – “Congratulations”
11. Julia Michaels – “Issues”
12. James Arthur – “Say You Won’t Let Go”
13. Kygo x Selena Gomez – “It Ain’t Me”
14. Sam Hunt – “Body Like a Back Road”
15. Imagine Dragons – “Believer”
16. KYLE ft. Lil Yachty – “iSpy”
17. Childish Gambino – “Redbone”
18. French Montana ft. Swae Lee – “Unforgettable”
19. Brett Young – “In Case You Didn’t Know”
20. Ayo & Teo – “Rolex”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. Redbone
2. Stay
3. Humble.
4. Unforgettable

This is a Movie Review: Of Course Sam Elliott is ‘The Hero’ We Need Now and Forever

June 6, 2017

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This review was originally posted on News Cult in June 2017.

Starring: Sam Elliott, Laura Prepon, Nick Offerman, Krysten Ritter, Katharine Ross

Director: Brett Haley

Running Time: 93 Minutes

Rating: R for Never Being Too Old for Drugs and Sex

Release Date: June 9, 2017 (Limited)

If you hear the logline “legendary cowboy actor who gets confused when an awards show clip featuring him goes viral” and do not immediately cast Sam Elliott, well then, I am glad you are not one of the people who made The Hero. The role of Western icon Lee Hayden is as tailor made for the famously drawling, silver-mustachioed Elliott as any role as ever been for anyone. He might not be as confused by modern media or as melancholy as his character is, but I do not know all the details of his personal life, and we all have our moments.

In the midst of Lee’s renewed burst of notoriety, he spends his days smoking weed with his buddy/dealer (Nick Offerman), attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Krysten Ritter), and striking up some sort of an affair with a stand-up comedian a few decades younger than him (Laura Prepon). It is the latter relationship that gets the most narrative weight. May-December romances with big shot men can be a formula for a ton of tired creepiness, but Prepon holds her own in terms of self-assuredness and Elliott plays Lee as ambivalent as any viewer might be. What we see of Prepon’s stand-up is much more questionable.

All that this type of singularly focused character study requires to work are a compelling central performance and at least one resonant idea. We have already established that the former is met (it would be a shock if it weren’t). As for the latter, Lee utters the line, “Movies are other people’s dreams,” and this acts as the driving principle for much of the film. A series of dream sequences feature him at the edge of the ocean, waves lightly breaking in. Nothing much happens, but the mundanity is transcended by the beauty of simply living.

The Hero is Recommended If You Like: Being a Sam Elliott Fanboy

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Weed Strains

 

This Is a Movie Review: With ‘Beatriz at Dinner,’ Salma Hayek Ain’t Taking No Guff From Racist John Lithgow

June 6, 2017

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This review was originally published on News Cult in June 2017.

Starring: Salma Hayek, John Lithgow, Connie Britton, David Warshofsky, Chloë Sevigny, Jay Duplass, Amy Landecker, John Early

Director: Miguel Arteta

Running Time: 83 Minutes

Rating: R for Verbal Knifeplay

Release Date: June 9, 2017 (Limited)

What would you do if you have had a chance encounter with the person who represents all that you oppose? I imagine that many people would feel quite strongly when responding to this question but also that it would produce a number of disparate, potentially conflicting answers. Beatriz at Dinner, the latest collaboration from the Chuck & Buck team of writer Mike White (School of Rock, HBO’s Enlightened) and director Miguel Arteta (Youth in Revolt, Cedar Rapids), fundamentally understands this tension, with conviction in its ideals and uncertainty about how to live by them.

Beatriz (Salma Hayek) is a goat-owning masseuse/healer who makes a house call to her wealthy client Cathy (Connie Britton). When her car breaks down, she finds herself stuck at Cathy and her husband’s Grant’s (David Warshofsky) fancy dinner party. Cathy is happy to have Beatriz there, as she considers her family ever since she helped her daughter through cancer treatment. But Beatriz is culturally light years away from client’s friends and colleagues. Chloë Sevigny, Jay Duplass, and Amy Landecker are right in their cluelessly arrogant upper class wheelhouses. (Sample dialogue: “I love psychic stuff.”) And then there is real estate mogul Doug Strutt, brought to gloriously, hideously racist life by John Lithgow.

Comparisons between Strutt and a certain current world leader are inevitable, among perhaps both his detractors and his supporters. But it is worth noting that Lithgow’s performance is as far as can be from crudity, in terms of style if not so much substance. His default presence makes him a natural at playing oddly trustworthy authority figures. He has a hint of eccentricity – not so much that he ought to be dismissed, but just enough that he is allowed to get away with it. That reputation is ripe for subversion, as in the NBC sitcom Trial & Error, where his eccentricity verges on bumbling idiocy, or here, where it is a cover for plain evil.

While Lithgow’s performance is impressive in the most expected ways, Hayek’s is fascinating for how surprisingly, and occasionally even bafflingly, Beatriz behaves. But there are not really any logical inconsistencies here, as there is no blueprint for how to act in this situation. Beatriz believes that she recognizes Strutt as the developer who destroyed her Mexican community, and so she viciously chews him in front of the whole party. In this game of chess, she may have sacrificed her queen too early, but perhaps it is all part of her strategy. She bobs and weaves, offering up apologies, or feigning them, or mixing legitimate apologies in with lip service. In the meantime, she gathers up evidence to potentially prove Strutt’s misdeeds. But to what end? This is a man who boasts of skirting, or even running roughshod over, the law.

Responding to this moral vacuum requires counterintuitive behavior, which inspires a career-best performance from Hayek but puts the film on shaky narrative ground. The story ultimately becomes just as untethered as Beatriz, and accordingly it cannot really figure out how to conclude. Should it go in for the kill and ramp up the intensity, or should it settle for the moral victory? It offers up both versions, which is a little frustrating, but the straightforward viciousness is fun while it lasts.

Beatriz at Dinner is Recommended If You Like: Enlightened, Evil John Lithgow, Clapping Back

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Aperitifs for Destruction

This Is a Movie Review: ‘It Comes at Night’ Isn’t Just About Paranoia, It IS Paranoia

June 5, 2017

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This review was originally published on News Cult in June 2017.

Starring: Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo, Christopher Abbott, Riley Keough, Kelvin Harrison Jr.

Director: Trey Edward Shults

Running Time: 91 Minutes

Rating: R for Frequent Bouts of Vomiting Blood

Release Date: June 9, 2017

A common rule of thumb in horror is that which remains unseen makes for the scariest monsters. What if this guideline were stretched to its furthest limit? Could a total lack of evidence – the unseen itself as a concept – be the ultimate horror? The paranoia-fueled It Comes at Night makes a strong case for just that.

While the titular “It” remains beyond anyone’s perception, its effects are clear and visible right from the get-go. The film opens in a cabin in the woods, that staple of horror film settings, stripped down to its bare essentials. Paul (Joel Edgerton) and Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) live with their teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) in a most desolate location. Their first order of business is disposing of Sarah’s father Bud (David Pendleton), who has succumbed to some sort of deadly contagion that appears to be looming as a threat over the entire world. How far from society has this family removed itself? Or has civilization broken down entirely such that there is no society to detach from? How far into the future does this take place, or is this present day? Does time even matter?

All this uncertainty ensures that no happy ending can come out of someone breaking into Paul and Sarah’s thoroughly boarded-up home. Will (Christopher Abbott), the intruder, somehow manages to get an invitation out of Paul to join them in the house, along with his wife Kim (Riley Keough), and their young son Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner), but it is an uneasy peace. The two families divvy up their supplies evenly, but the issue here is not fairness, it is trust, which is impossible to establish. The specter of death in these woods is ever-present but also unknowable – anyone could be its agent, even without intending to be. A simple changing of one’s mind is cause for confrontation.

At the risk of giving too much away, I think it is important to note that It Comes at Night might not exactly be the film that its advertising makes it out to be. This is a major issue at a time when horror hounds expect visceral thrills out of something low-key like It Follows or they anticipate comprehensibility out of something inscrutable like The Witch. It Comes’ trailers give the sense that there is some monster lurking in the woods that is the source of the disease. That might be true, but that is also beside the point. It could also be a government experiment gone wrong, or it could be a nameless, faceless apocalypse-level pandemic. But the prime monster in this slice of the world is paranoia. When the structure of one’s reality breaks apart irreversibly, there is no such thing as security or sanity.

It Comes at Night is Recommended If You Like: The Thing, The Others, The Blair Witch Project

Grade: 4 out of 5 Infections

What Won TV? – May 28-June 3, 2017

June 4, 2017

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In this feature, I look back at each day of the past week and determine what shows “won TV” for the night. That is, I consider every episode of television I watched that aired on a particular day and declare which was the best.

Sunday – Twin Peaks
Monday – Angie Tribeca
Tuesday – Downward Dog
Wednesday – Fargo-go-go-go!
Thursday – Beat Shazam once, shame on you. Beat Shazam twice, shame on Shazam.
Friday – RuPaul’s Drag Race
Saturday – Doctor Who

This Is a Movie Review: ‘3 Idiotas’ Scramble for Academic Glory in This Mexican Remake of a Bollywood Blockbuster

June 1, 2017

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This review was originally posted on News Cult in June 2017.

Starring: Alfonso Dosal, Martha Higareda, Germán Valdés III, Christian Vázquez, Vadhir Derbez, Rodrigo Murray

Director: Carlos Bolado

Running Time: 106 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Fairly Painful, Occasionally Crude Physical Comedy

Release Date: June 2, 2017

The Mexican comedy 3 Idiotas makes the case that Hollywood clichés about higher education translate easily south of the border and that those same clichés can still be entertaining when delivered by spirited performances. Based on 3 Idiots, one of the highest-grossing Indian films of all time, Idiotas (the third of at least six remakes, including a planned American version) follows titular knuckleheads Pancho (Alfonso Dosal, a dead ringer for Rami Malek), Beto (Germán Valdés III), and Felipe (Christian Vázquez) as they work their way to an engineering degree. They are branded as fools not because of a lack of academic acumen (for the most part) but because of their tendency to run afoul of authority, particularly blowhard professor Esaclona (Rodrigo Murray).

Felipe is the first in his family to make it to college, Beto would rather be a photographer; these two get sufficient resolutions, but this is mostly Pancho’s story. Their college exploits are presented through a frame story, in which Felipe and Beto recount their earlier days while tracking down Pancho, who disappeared on the cusp of graduation. Pancho is one of the university’s most promising students, and his budding romance with med student Mariana is obviously headed for a happy ending, even though he ruins her sister’s wedding and his dad is the aforementioned Escalona. There are some rom-com detours into over-the-top complications, which are a bit frustrating, but they are not a dealbreaker when the crux of the story is the mix of coming-of-age maturation and aspirational academia.

Essentially, 3 Idiotas’ purpose is a combination of standing up to authority, inspiring its characters and viewers to invent new products, and scatology. That sounds like a ridiculous menu, but somehow it left me delighted throughout. As Escalona, Murray is fully committed to the power-hungry academic role that is the bane of many a cinematic free-thinker. His is an exaggerated stereotype, but he wears it well. The inspirational angle feels shoehorned in out of necessity; it is too vague to produce real results, but at least it is plenty earnest. And then there are the farts. So many farts. One character is branded with the nickname “Stinky McToilet.” Maybe that moniker lost some dignity in translation from Spanish to English, but quite frankly, I hope not.

And because this is a remake of an Indian film, there is Bollywood-style closing credits dance extravaganza. It pretty much comes out of nowhere, but how can you ever say no to the rhythm?

3 Idiotas is Recommended If You Like: Dead Poets Society, Easy A, Nacho Libre (for the farts)

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Scorched Scrotums

 

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