‘Villains’ Flips the Home Invasion Thriller Script Over and Over Again

September 18, 2019

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CREDIT: Anna Kooris

Starring: Maika Monroe, Bill Skarsgård, Jeffrey Donovan, Kyra Sedgwick, Blake Baumgartner

Directors: Dan Berk and Robert Olsen

Running Time: 88 Minutes

Rating: R for Gunfire, Bloody Whacks on the Head, and Resourceful Cocaine Use

Release Date: September 20, 2019 (Limited)

Don’t you just hate it when you’re a criminal on the run and you break into a house and then it turns out that the homeowners are much more devious than you are? This seems to happen relatively often in the movies, but perhaps less so in real life. I certainly would not want to participate myself, both because breaking and entering is illegal and because it can be quite creepy to walk around an unfamiliar house. But I am perfectly happy to watch others do it, and the latest example why is Villains.

This bloody little black comedy thriller stars Maika Monroe and Bill Skarsgård as Mickey and Jules, a couple whose love is strong and tender enough to overcome the stress of covering up their crimes. It’s a neat trick that they pull off with their performances, wherein they get us to root for them by consistently reminding us of their humanity without ever asking us to excuse their convenience store robbery in the opening scene. It certainly doesn’t hurt how much they stand in contrast to Jeffrey Donovan and Kyra Sedgwick’s George and Gloria, a couple whose efforts to craft the perfect genteel dollhouse-style home has led them to kidnap a little girl (Blake Baumgartner, who played a young Nicole Fosse in Fosse/Verdon) and chain her up in their basement. Mickey and Jules’ efforts to escape this predicament while negotiating an uneasy truce with George and Gloria makes for an economical little battle of wits (as well as an occasionally physical battle) that will have you constantly puzzling out (along with the character)s what the best course of action is.

Villains is Recommended If You Like: Don’t Breathe, Ready or Not, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

Grade: 3 out of 5 Negotiations

Community’s Ten Best Episodes: Ten-Year Anniversary Edition

September 17, 2019

jmunney Community, Television , , , 1 Comment

CREDIT: NBC

Community, my favorite TV show of all time, premiered on NBC ten years ago, September 17, 2009. So it’s a pretty good time to do some episode rankings. Below, I have selected the ten best outings in the show’s six-season run. I would like to rank all 110 episodes at some point in the future, but that is quite a project. For now, ten will do. (But stay tuned.)

1. “Remedial Chaos Theory” – Knowledge of timelines deepens friendship.
2. “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television” – The future looks cyclical, in a comforting way.
3 “Cooperative Calligraphy” – A bottle episode at breakneck wit and speed.
4. “Virtual Systems Analysis” – Experimentalism at full emotional depth.
5. “Paradigms of Human Memory” – The ultimate in expense-adding clip shows.
6. “Critical Film Studies” – As fulfilling as two ants getting down to brass tacks.
7. “Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design” – The reveals spill out with equal parts full logic and full nonsense.
8. “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” – The meaning of Community episodes is that we find meaning in them.
9. “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” – The power of the mind is truly remarkable.
10. “Debate 109” – Character dynamics calcify and influence so much of what is to come.

The ‘Downton Abbey’ Movie Does Right By Its Dozens of Characters

September 16, 2019

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CREDIT: Jaap Buitendijk/Focus Features

Starring: Hugh Bonneville, Max Brown, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Raquel Cassidy, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Kevin Doyle, Michael C. Fox, Joanne Froggatt, Matthew Goode, Harry Haden-Paton, David Haig, Geraldine James, Robert James-Collier, Simon Jones, Allen Leech, Phyllis Logan, Elizabeth McGovern, Sophie McShera, Tuppence Middleton, Stephen Campbell Moore, Lesley Nicol, Kate Phillips, Douglas Reith, Maggie Smith, Phillippe Spall, Imelda Staunton, Penelope Wilton

Director: Michael Engler

Running Time: 122 Minutes

Rating: PG for Some Stolen Kisses and Slightly Scandalous Secrets

Release Date: September 20, 2019

I like to be upfront about the fact that I don’t always consume media straightforwardly. Sometimes I start TV shows five seasons in. Sometimes I watch the fifth sequel in a franchise despite never having any seen any previous entries. And sometimes, as in the case of Downton Abbey, I watch a TV-to-film adaptation without ever having seen a single episode of the series. Thus, I cannot report with any expertise about how the big-screen adventures of the Crawleys and company compare to their small-screen foibles. But I can tell you how it works as a cinematic experience while coming in with (basically) no expectations.

In an era of nerd culture dominance, it seems like there is a new superhero movie every other month that expects its audience to be up-to-date on years of backstory for a multitude of characters. Downton Abbey is often the type of movie that tends to get shoved aside in this current marketplace, but it does share one important quality with your Avengers or your Justice League. And that is its magnificently sprawling cast. I’m sure that keeping track of everyone is easier for fans of the show than it is for me, but even so, properly attending to approximately three dozen characters in only two hours sounds exhausting for both a screenwriter and a viewer.

Luckily, show creator Julian Fellowes, who penned the script, knows how to keep the focus, and Michael Engler offers no-fuss direction that lets the actors do what they do. It all starts with King George V and Queen Mary (Simon Jones and Geraldine James) announcing that they will be making an overnight visit to Downton Abbey as part of a tour of the country. Chaos (or chaos-ish) ensues. Along the way, there are small pleasures all over the place that add up to a full feast of pleasures. An arrogant royal chef makes a fool of himself, conversations about how the future might bring more rights to the underclasses are discussed, and the Dowager Countess drops her devastating quips. It’s admiringly economical comfort food.

Downton Abbey is Recommended If You Like: Downton Abbey the TV show, presumably

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Royal Visits

Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 9/13/19

September 13, 2019

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CREDIT: Amazon Prime Video/YouTube Screenshot

Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.

Movies
–Hustlers (Theatrically Nationwide)

TV
–Undone Season 1 (September 13 on Amazon Prime) – A new animated wonder from BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg.
-Comedy Central Roast of Alec Baldwin (September 15 on Comedy Central)
-Ken Burns’ Country Music (Premieres September 15 on PBS)
–The Masked Singer: Super Sneak Peek (September 15 on FOX) – There’s an “Egg” costume this season.
–CONAN Without Borders: Ghana (September 17 on TBS) Looks like this has been rescheduled!

Music
-Charli XCX, Charli – One of today’s best pop hitmakers.

‘Hustlers’ Makes Its Case for Joining the Crime Film Canon

September 11, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

CREDIT: Barbara Nitke/STX

Starring: Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Stiles, Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, Mercedes Ruehl, Cardi B, Madeline Brewer, Lizzo

Director: Lorene Scafaria

Running Time: 110 Minutes

Rating: R for Incidental and Purposeful Strip Club Nudity, A Few Roofies and Cocaine Bumps, and Some Crimes-Gone-Wrong Chaos

Release Date: September 13, 2019

There’s a scene early in Hustlers when Jennifer Lopez masterfully, with almost arrogant panache, swings around the pole to the tune of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal,” and it looks like this is going to be the distaff answer to Magic Mike. For too long, cinematic lady stripping has focused merely on the exploitative, and now it is time to treat it like an art form! J. Lo’s command of physics and her own body at 50 years old is indeed a breathtaking wonder to behold, but this is merely the amuse-bouche. Soon enough, Hustlers develops into an epic crime drama, a sort of female spin on Goodfellas. It only spans a few years versus the decades of Scorcese’s gangster classic, but it doesn’t take too long for the relationships at the heart of this scam to become deeper and deeper and more and more complicated.

Calling a new movie “the female (previous movie)” is usually frustratingly reductive, but in this case, the comparison can be unusually illuminating. I recently read a Time article that cited political science research about the differences between the typical reasons men and women get into politics. Where men tend to do so for the status of the position, women tend to run so that they can effect social change. While watching Hustlers, I wondered if the same rubric could be applied to explain the different rationales why men and women enter into a life of crime. So many cinematic male gangsters and fraudsters (Henry Hill chief among them) become what they become because of how cool it seems. But Constance Wu’s Dorothy and Lopez’s Ramona come up with their scam so that they can take of their kids, parents, grandparents, and sisters at the club.

The scheme at the center of Hustlers involves Ramona, Dorothy, and their colleagues luring their Wall Street customers into a blacked-out trap, drugging them enough that they’re willing to drop tens of thousands of dollars in one night at a strip club (but not so much that they fall asleep or OD). They justify their actions by figuring that these guys can afford to have a few g’s go missing. Plus, in light of the 2000s financial crisis, they’re essentially guilty of stealing from the rest of the country and getting away with it. The trouble comes when it becomes clear that some of the girls’ marks are not as invincible as they try to rationalize, and they’re in fact putting them in the same economic bind that they’ve been fighting themselves to get out of. The sisterhood that’s built by the Hustlers scam is full of genuine love, and that’s why it’s so bittersweet when the bubble is burst. If you’re looking for a story that epitomizes doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, this is the best option in quite some time.

P.S.: There’s a running gag in which Lili Reinhart vomits in high-pressure situations, and it never fails to deliver.

Hustlers is Recommended If You Like: Goodfellas, Magic Mike, Thelma & Louise, Economic Revenge

Grade: 4 out of 5 Scores

ABC Summer Fun & Games: An Appraisal

September 10, 2019

jmunney Game Shows, Television , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Byron Cohen/ABC

Summer 2019 is winding to a close, which means we will soon have to say goodbye for now to one of my favorite programming blocks, ABC’s “Summer Fun & Games.” I’ve been meaning to do an appraisal of how well each show reaches its potential and how thoroughly they strike my particular pleasure centers, and that’s what I’ve done below. I’ve included all the shows that are currently on the block as well as those that have been cancelled or are on hiatus, organizing them into categories worthy of their status.

CREDIT: Heidi Gutman/ABC

The Titans
Celebrity Family Feud
Match Game
It’s your boy Steve Harvey hosting the stalwart program that all the fame-os want to be on. And it’s Master MC Alec Baldwin fully inhabiting the ringmaster role in the perfect venue where celebrity shtick comes to (blank).

More

Where Are We Going?! ‘Dora and the Lost City of Gold’ Review!

September 8, 2019

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CREDIT: Paramount Pictures

The best parts of Dora and the Lost City of Gold are when Dora goes to high school, and I kind of (actually more than kind of) wish a lot more of the movie took place there. Now, I generally have a rule that I do not criticize a movie for what it isn’t, instead preferring to grapple with what it actually is. But when the movie itself gives us a preview of what it could’ve been, I think it’s valid to wonder “what if?”

I’m a sucker for fish-out-of-water scenarios and recontextualization, and Dora’s enrollment into Los Angeles’ secondary school system is a textbook example. It’s very Mean Girls-esque, but tonally reversed, as Dora is too unflappably peppy and resourceful to ever be consumed by the darkness of high school pettiness. Instead, she is going to win over everyone eventually by sheer force of will, and Isabela Moner is absolutely up to the task. And let’s be clear: she’s not naive. She knows her classmates make fun of her for singing about her backpack and other aggressive idiosyncrasies, but she is just so sure of herself that she can’t be anyone else, and that is a quality I admire more than just about anything. When her school has a “Dress as Your Favorite Star” dance, you get the sense that she actually does understand that “star” means “celebrity,” but she nevertheless chooses to dress as the Sun, so that’s pretty awesome.

Anyway, Dora and some friends get kidnapped, then they go searching for her missing parents in the jungle, and that’s the majority of the movie. It’s a family-friendly Indiana Jones, and you’ve probably seen this sort of adventure dozens of time before. But never before with Danny Trejo voicing a monkey.

I give Dora and the Lost City of Gold a Grade of “Delightful!” Encantadora! Can you say, “Encantadora”?

A Touch of Time Travel: ‘Don’t Let Go’ Review

September 6, 2019

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CREDIT: Sundance Institute

Okay, so: Don’t Let Go is about a homicide detective (David Oyelowo) whose brother, sister-in-law, and niece are brutally murdered, and then he starts getting phone calls from his dead niece (Storm Reid), but it seems that she’s still alive, because she’s calling from … THE PAST! Yeah, so I’m hooked.

Det. Oyelowo gets right into it, directing Storm to start doing some covert investigating of her own in the hopes of altering the timeline. Of course then Don’t Let Go bumps up against a common time travel conundrum, i.e., if the past is altered, how will that affect the present, and will anyone remember the original past timeline, and if so, will that make sense? Or will it turn out that any “alterations” were a part of the original timeline all along, with any attempts to make changes proving instead to be a recursive insurance that it will all end up the same way?

Don’t Let Go actually manages to pull off the former in a way that makes enough cinematic sense to get by (and the shifts are rendered visually in satisfyingly disorienting fashion), as the past and present seem to be tethered together on an inflection point. And if we want to, we can say that the phone conversations are the portal that allows for the callers to have memories of multiple timelines. That being said, there are relatively few moments when the timeline is actually altered, and it certainly feels like there could be more. But I wonder if it had been bulkier that way, maybe it would have been too much to keep track of. So I’m mostly satisfied. Alfred Molina plays a reliable authority figure! It’s a fun genre experiment!

I give Don’t Let Go My Agreement to Complete Its Weird Requests.

Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 9/6/19

September 6, 2019

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CREDIT: Logan White

Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.

Movies
–IT: Chapter Two (Theatrically Nationwide) – Not as good as the first, but strange enough to be worth seeing.

Music
-Bat for Lashes, Lost Girls

Movie Review: For Better and Worse, ‘IT: Chapter Two’ Goes Full Stephen King

September 5, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

CREDIT: Brooke Palmer/Warner Bros.

Starring: James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Jay Ryan, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, James Ransone, Andy Bean, Bill Skarsgård, Jaeden Martell, Sophia Lillis, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff

Director: Andy Muschietti

Running Time: 169 Minutes

Rating: R for Bloody Clown Chomps, A Few Stabbings, Nervous Vomiting, and Creepy Nudity

Release Date: September 6, 2019

IT: Chapter Two is solidly built upon a foundation of a melancholy truth about human existence. When we’re young, we may vow to keep what’s important to us as children just as important when we became adults. But somehow, some way, we all forget some of the things we once held dear, while also remaining stuck in some of the patterns we thought we would eventually grow out of. The Losers Club of Derry, Maine represent the epitome of this mercurial attachment to the past. And so it is that 27 years after their first series of misadventures, they must return to once again defeat the supernatural evil entity that terrorizes their hometown.

This melancholy setup is an apt formula for psychological agony mixing with real in-your-face terror, but the trouble with Chapter Two is that so many of the scares are so scattered from the overarching purpose. Winged insect-bird hybrids popping out of fortune cookies and an old naked lady who turns into a floppy-breasted gargoyle are plenty creepy in and of themselves, but these moments just keep piling onto one another as a series of random horror set pieces, and the effect is eventually exhausting. Even some of the moments that actually feature Pennywise (like a gay couple being beaten up by a mob only to then fall victim to the clown or a cute little girl bonding with Pennywise over facial deformity) are effective mini-movies unto themselves, but they could have easily been cut without losing the main thread involving the Losers. Their story of coming to grips with what won’t leave them alone is effective when the full-to-bursting script actually focuses on them. Ultimately, IT: Chapter Two is decidedly overambitious and overdramatic, but it is a fascinating mess, embracing Stephen King at his weirdest and most extra.

IT: Chapter Two is Recommended If You Like: The most unfiltered Stephen King adaptations

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Hidden Memories

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