This Is a Movie Review: Winning

September 8, 2017

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

Documentary

Starring: Nadia Comăneci, Jack Nicklaus, Martina Navratilova, Edwin Moses, Esther Vergeer

Director: Jacqueline Joseph

Running Time: 78 Minutes

Rating: Unrated, But It Could Easily Be G

Release Date: September 8, 2017 at Cinepolis Chelsea in New York City

For anyone expecting a chronicle of Charlie Sheen’s post-Two and a Half Men media blitz based on the title, you’re out of luck. Jacqueline Joseph’s documentary takes a much more straightforward approach to the concept of Winning, which is probably best for our insanity, but does it manage to be top-notch entertainment?

Joseph’s purpose is to identify what separates the all-time greatest athletes from the mere occasional champions. Ergo, Winning profiles five such folks who achieved some of the greatest winning streaks of all time: gymnast Nadia Comăneci, winner of nine Olympic medals and the first in her sport to earn a perfect 10.0 score; tennis player Martina Navratilova, owner of the longest winning streak (74 matches) in the open era; golfer Jack Nicklaus, winner of a record 18 major championships; track and field star Edwin Moses, winner of 122 consecutive races and former world record holder in the 400 meter hurdles; and wheelchair tennis player Esther Vergeer, who had a lifetime match record of 700-25.

While Winning does offer a few theses about the identity of a champion, none of them are particularly groundbreaking. All five athletes worked hard in their careers, leaps and bounds harder than not only the average person, but also that much more than even many of their rivals. This is common sense, but it is occasionally amusingly stated, as when Comăneci suggests that if that intensity is not for you, then just go be a spectator.

Winning also runs into the problem of how to devote enough space in less than an hour and a half to multiple figures who are all worthy of their own feature length docs. There is an effort made to demonstrate how each of them transcended their sports, but the meaningfulness therein is not on the same level for each of them. There is also some attempted connective tissue between the struggles that each of them faced when growing up, but again the magnitudes of those struggles do not quite match (Moses being teased for having “Kermit legs” is not exactly Navratilova defecting from communist Czechoslovakia at age 18).

Ultimately, Winning is enjoyable enough thanks to the winning personalities of its subjects. Comăneci is disarmingly blunt, Navratilova is naturally low-key charming, Nicklaus and Moses are genuinely folksy, and Vergeer is unfailingly sunny. If you train your camera on people who know better than anyone else how to perform under pressure, you’re going to get something at least somewhat worthwhile.

Winning is Recommended If You Like: Sports! Sports! All Kinds of Sports!

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Trophies

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Unlocked’ is Only for the Least Discerning Action Buffs

August 31, 2017

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

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Toni Collette, John Malkovich, Michael Douglas, Orlando Bloom

Director: Michael Apted

Running Time: 98 Minutes

Rating: R for Bloody Double Crosses

Release Date: September 1, 2017 (Limited and On-Demand)

Unlocked is just like any other global criss-crossing spy intrigue action thrillers that the likes of Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme knocked out in their sleep in their heydays and probably still are cranking out (oh, the mysterious wonders of the home entertainment market). But instead of a hyper-masculine slab of meat singlehandedly saving the world from terrorism, this time it’s a tiny Swedish woman. So… progress?

While it is heartening to see a woman act competently in a traditionally male domain without anyone questioning her credentials, it is not as if Unlocked is otherwise compelling enough for those involved to be especially proud of. As cinema’s original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Noomi Rapace is right in her comfort zone, so she does manage to acquit herself admirably. But this is cookie-cutter spycraft, with every beat of flashbacks to haywire past missions and predictable double crosses crossed off in the most vanilla manner.

Rapace is supported by a cast of co-stars that are incongruously big and classy. Not one, not two, but THREE Oscar-nominated actors pop up in pivotal roles. Toni Collette, John Malkovich, and Michael Douglas manage to maintain their dignity, but the movie gives them few opportunities to be interesting. Even the director is a fairly notable name. Michael Apted (perhaps best known for the Up documentary series) has action experience in his filmography, including 1999’s The World is Not Enough, but none of the style inherent to the Bond series appears to have rubbed off on him.

In Unlocked’s final act, it manages to stick in some thematic muscle that it probably meant to explore all along. It turns out that the terrorist plot at the center of it all may be the doing of government machinations. There is potential fuel here to fan the flames of 9/11 truther-style conspiracy theorists. But Unlocked lacks the conviction to be either legitimately controversial or hysterically entertaining.

Unlocked is Recommended If You Like: Steven Seagal/Jean-Claude Van Damme/Chuck Norris completism, but with a distaff twist

Grade: 1 out of 5 Global Viruses

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Birth of the Dragon’ Wrings Some Drama Out of a Legendary Kung Fu Fight

August 24, 2017

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

Starring: Philip Ng, Billy Magnussen, Xia Yu, Jinjing Qu, Jin Xing

Director: George Nolfi

Running Time: 103 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Kung Fu Ass Kicking and Mild Gangsterism

Release Date: August 25, 2017

Birth of the Dragon purports to be about a legendary fight between martial arts masters Bruce Lee (Philip Ng) and Wong Jack Man (Xia Yu), and it is about that for the most part, but an oddly significant amount of narrative weight is devoted to an out-of-place love story. I am not sure if this can be explained by commercial reasons, but I do not imagine that anyone who is mainly looking for romance would also be in the mood for sitting through a bunch of kung fu. Or perhaps it is just there to pad out the story. But that too is a puzzling choice, as there is more than enough drama to draw out of the Lee/Man conflict. The love story is far from fluffy, as it touches upon the struggles of Chinese immigrants in 1960s San Francisco, so the problem is more about overstuffing than irrelevance.

Much of the buildup to the fight is conveyed through a go-between in the form of Steve McKee (Billy Magnussen), one of Lee’s American students, who is essentially a third protagonist. Far from whitewashing, his presence gets at the heart of the conflict, or at least what one combatant assumes to be the heart of the conflict. Lee believes that Wong Jack Man has travelled to America because he disapproves of Lee teaching kung fu to Westerners. While Man is certainly the more traditional of the two, their disagreement is more complicated than that. That ambiguity helps overcome the problem intrinsic to this film: the actual fight between these two was not recorded, and its result is the stuff of legend. Birth of the Dragon makes the wise decision that the actual winner is beside the point.

Naturally, Birth of the Dragon is really only worth recommending if its action choreography can come anywhere close to the level of its subjects. I have only ever seen clips of Lee’s film and TV work, but I cannot imagine that Birth is anywhere near as stunning as the likes of Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon. It is far from embarrassing (Ng especially has an extensive martial arts background), but masters in any field deserve tributes that earn more than only the faintest of praise.

Birth of the Dragon is Recommended If You Like: Kung Fu Completism

Grade: 2 out of 5 Chips on Your Shoulder

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Leap!’ Can Only Inspire Aspiring Ballerinas If They’re Unfamiliar with the Uncanny Valley

August 22, 2017

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

Starring: Elle Fanning, Nat Wolff, Carly Rae Jepsen, Maddie Ziegler, Kate McKinnon, Mel Brooks

Directors: Éric Summer and Éric Warin

Running Time: 89 Minutes

Rating: PG for Lightly Disturbing Stage Motherhood

Release Date: August 25, 2017

Hey guys, I know there are a lot of terrible things going on in the world that we need to be worried about, but there is yet one more thing I need to alert you about. Apparently the French are not so keen about orphans joining their prestigious ballet companies. Luckily, an animated movie now exists to inspire aspiring ballerinas to keep their heads up no matter where they are from! That movie is Leap!, but alas, its cookie-cutter CG animation, far from inspirational itself, is instead liable to call to mind the most bizarre cartoon you only discover in your most desperate Netflix binges. Oh well, at least it gives us an excuse to start a campaign to get Carly Rae Jepsen a Best Original Song Oscar.

The plot is the same as any inspirational animated kids movie: a misfit tries to sneak her way into the big time, where she must withstand the arrogance of the gatekeepers and the ruthlessness of her rivals, but she stands just enough of a chance for success, thanks to her own boundless gumption and a somewhat mysterious mentor figure who finds the room in her heart to train her. The whole affair is kind-spirited enough that even the most morally lacking characters in the ballet world are easily redeemed by the end. If you are an aspiring ballerina yourself, or have one in your life, you may derive value from watching Leap! For everyone else, the whole endeavor may be too disorienting to have any demonstrable results.

Leap! is an international co-production with two French directors, and accordingly it often has a vibe of being lost in translation. Characters respond to each other with lines that do not quite make sense. Dialogue is often offscreen, frequently resulting in a weird sensation in which the words sound simultaneously nearby and far away. These are the sorts of uncanny valley effects that slightly subpar CG animation always runs the risk of featuring. At least the conclusion is a satisfying reprieve from all that: as Jepsen’s sublimely buoyant “Cut to the Feeling” cuts in during the credits, it is like a marvelous return to the real world.

Leap! is Recommended If You Like: Ice Princess, Hallucinating from Inexplicably Weird Animation, Carly Rae Jepsen completism

Grade: 2.25 out of 5 Depressed Elephants

This Is a Movie Review: Annabelle: Creation

August 19, 2017

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Annabelle: Creation really takes a while to ramp up the intensity. Like, at least an hour, maybe even an hour-fifteen, into its running time, at which point it finally starts ripping limbs and tearing faces apart enough to (barely) justify its R rating. That is kind of crazy given the relentless standard set by the previous Conjuring/Annabelle films. In the prelude, there are a lot of lingering close-ups and light/dark interplay in which you have plenty of time to uncover the agents of evil lurking in the fuzzy shadows. Ultimately, Creation is most valuable for how it expands the mythology, favoring a harmonically mind-bending approach that calls to mind the latter-day Paranormal Activity sequels.

I give Annabelle: Creation 5 Broken Fingers Around a Cross in Every Frame.

This Is a Movie Review: Steven Soderbergh and the ‘Logan Lucky’ Crew Pull Off a Heist at the Biggest Race of the Year

August 18, 2017

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Credit: Claudette Barius / Fingerprint Releasing | Bleecker Street

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

Starring: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Riley Keough, Daniel Craig, Katie Holmes, Dwight Yoakam, Seth MacFarlane, Jack Quaid, Brian Gleeson, Katherine Waterston, Hilary Swank

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Running Time: 119 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Improvised Explosives and Slapstick Violence, Often Involving a Prosthetic

Release Date: August 18, 2017

If you follow the sports world, you will have noticed lately the several examples of the wonders that taking significant time off does towards extending a career. Roger Federer and Serena Williams, perhaps the two greatest tennis players of all time, have taken months-long breaks and at ages 36 and 35, respectively (ancient by athletic standards), they are still somehow in the primes of their careers. The physicality of sports and filmmaking are not exactly the same, but both can be similarly taxing. So while it is right to question the accuracy of Steven Soderbergh’s claim that he was retiring from directing, it is not right to question the wisdom of what he was actually doing, i.e., taking a nice, long, relaxing break, as Logan Lucky is the type of film that you make only when you are bursting with energy.

Logan is Soderbergh’s first directorial effort since 2013’s Side Effects and the HBO film Behind the Candelabra, but in premise, it most obviously brings to mind his Ocean’s trilogy. Recently unemployed West Virginia coal miner Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) recruits his one-armed Iraq War vet bartender brother Clyde (Adam Driver) and hairdresser sister Mellie (Riley Keough), along with incarcerated bleached-blonde demolitions expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) and Joe’s supposed computer expert brothers Fish (Jack Quaid) and Sam (Brian Gleeson), to rob the cash deposits at Charlotte Motor Speedway during the Coca-Cola 600, the longest annual race on the NASCAR calendar. So it is basically a hillbilly Ocean’s 11 (Logan’s 6, if you will), and that connection is referenced head-on with a sneakily well-timed joke. Now, don’t let that description fool you into thinking that this film looks down on the people that populate it. Its particular strength is how thoroughly and empathetically each character is rendered, despite their colorful personalities offering an easy temptation for stereotypes.

Accordingly, every actor is given plenty of opportunities to stretch, with Soderbergh guiding them along to their best instincts. Keough shines in her accounting of the West Virginia highway system, Driver is wholly convincing with his unassuming one-armed bartending prowess, Seth MacFarlane is Snidely Whiplash-levels ridiculous as a luxuriously coiffed, arrogant driver, Farrah Mackenzie (as Jimmy’s young daughter Sadie) charms enough to somehow make pageant culture a little less nauseating than usual, and when Special Agent Hilary Swank shows up, she makes an all-business demeanor just as much fun as criminality. But the biggest praise is rightfully reserved for Craig, who is delightfully unhinged in the friendliest way possible, as well as Dwight Yoakam, as a warden whose loss of control of his prison amazingly involves the most hilarious taking to task of George R.R. Martin I have ever witnessed.

The conflict of heist movies is such that their cool vibes always goad you into rooting for the criminals. While these robbers typically are not violent, and often target the most powerful and greediest, they are in fact still criminals. The fact that these are just movies should be enough to remove any feelings of moral crisis. But in case you want more than that, there is a Robin Hood-style resolution. Your mileage may vary on what that means in terms of ethical implications, but there is no doubt that it contributes to the good vibes.

Logan Lucky is Recommended If You Like: Heist Films, Southern-Fried Flavor, Feeling Pumped When You Walk Out of the Theater

Grade: 4 out of 5 Painted Cockroaches

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Patti Cake$’ Makes Tasty North Jersey Hip Hop Cake as Fast as It Can

August 16, 2017

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Photo courtesy of Jeong Park. © 2017 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

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

Starring: Danielle Macdonald, Bridget Everett, Siddharth Dhananjay, Mamoudou Athie, Cathy Moriarty

Director: Geremy Jasper

Running Time: 108 Minutes

Rating: R for Three Generations of Women Spouting Profanity, Showing Off Cleavage at Job Interviews

Release Date: August 18, 2017 (Limited)

Most rappers are still black and male, but the genre is such a permanent fixture in the culture at large that any deviation from the demographic norm is hardly surprising. So I appreciate that Patti Cake$ treats the race and gender of its protagonist as generally no big deal one way or the other. After all, she does live in the “Dirty Jersey” melting pot of Bergen County (right across Manhattan along the George Washington Bridge). Alas, while Patti Cake$ does spit to its own rhythm, it hews pretty closely to the beats of the struggling artist narrative. But what it lacks in structural ingenuity, it makes up for with the variety of seemingly disparate parts that complement each other in its collage.

Patricia Dombrowski (Australian newcomer Danielle Macdonald) is feisty enough on her own, but it is thanks to her collaborators that she really shines. The group they form is christened “PBNJ,” wherein P is Patti, J is her longtime best friend on the hooks Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay), B is disaffected but sensitive anarchist beat-mixer Basterd, and N is Patti’s Nana (Cathy Moriarty), whose chainsmoke-ravaged rasp is adorably sampled and looped into the chorus. As far as rap goes, their tracks aren’t exactly mind-blowing, or game-changing, or groundbreaking, and the movie concedes as much. Still, they are plenty rousing. That relative lack of prowess holds it back from being an all-time great in the genre, but it is powerful enough, and the modesty is appreciated.

If Patti Cake$ sticks with you, it will most likely be because of how generously it lets you into Patti’s life. She is an upstanding young adult, putting just as much effort into into the money-making aspect of her hustle as she does the rhyming side. Her relationship with her mother Barb (Bridget Everett) is as affecting as it ought to be. Barb is not exactly supportive of Patti’s hip-hop ambitions, but it is not because she is unsupportive in general, far from it. Nor is it because she does not understand the life of an artist – in fact, she had a bit of a musical career herself as the lead singer of a lady metal band that was cut short just as they were on the edge of big-time success. It’s just that she’s old school, set in her own way, and just hasn’t seen any evidence that rap is a genre worth pursuing. That is why the final performance scene at an amateur showcase concert is so crucial. It wraps everything up thematically and unites every member of Patti’s family, putting her story squarely in the file of “crowd-pleaser.”

Patti Cake$ is Recommended If You Like: 8 Mile, Affectionately making fun of North Jersey, Mother-Daughter Bonding

Grade: 3 out of 5 Acronym Band Names

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Whose Streets?’ Asks the Most Urgent Questions for Ferguson, St. Louis, and All of America

August 11, 2017

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

Documentary

Director: Sabaah Folayan

Running Time: 103 Minutes

Rating: R for The Words People Say When They Are Justifiably Angry

Release Date: August 11, 2017 (Limited)

It is not hard to be mad enough to make a whole film about the recent police abuses in this country. It is practically its own subgenre at this point. But it can be challenging to channel that anger into something unique and focused. Whose Streets? cracks open the genre in a way that seeks to renew humanity to the dehumanized. Local law enforcement is trucking out in tanks on the streets of St. Louis and Ferguson as if their residents are militant insurgents. Whose streets are these really? That ought to be a rhetorical question, as the answer should be obvious. What we have here is a new angle getting at the same old overarching question: do we really have the rights that our country has promised us?

Taking that insurgency comparison further, at one point a Missouri resident muses how militants in countries like Iraq have been branded as insurgents, despite fighting in their homeland. It is the most salient point of the film, highlighting how one of the most skewed perspectives baked into American policy extends in every direction. It all amounts to shouting at a system that is nowhere near having the same conversation as you.

For some viewers, the correctness of Whose Streets?’s perspective will be enough to excuse the occasionally scattered approach that is a feature of most documentaries. And indeed, this doc is more righteously focused than most. Its lack of polish holds me back from a full endorsement, and I also wonder if Whose Streets? can really make any tangible difference in finding justice for the likes of Michael Brown and Vonderrit Myers. But I can’t deny the power, and continued need, to shout out these cries with fiery emotion.

Whose Streets? is Recommended If You Like: Social justice documentaries

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Riots

This Is a Movie Review: Robert Pattinson is a Low-Level Bank Robber and Devoted Brother in the Grainy, Queens-Set ‘Good Time’

August 9, 2017

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

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Ben Safdie, Buddy Duress, Taliah Webster, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Barkhad Abdi

Director: Ben and Josh Safdie

Running Time: 99 Minutes

Rating: R for the Vices of a Night in the City

Release Date: August 11, 2017 (Limited)

How far would you go for a better life for yourself and your brother? If said brother is mentally handicapped and you are the lead character in a crime-on-the-streets movie, then chances are the answer is “pretty far.” Ergo, there is no surprise about the general forces that pushes Good Time along, but the details are quite unpredictable.

The majority of the plot follows Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) in a desperate night through Queens as he attempts to correct his mistakes and bust his brother Nick (co-director Ben Safdie) out of jail following a botched bank robbery. He first attempts to cover the bail money by turning to a friend/lover (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who is way too old for him and for her own lack of emotional maturity. But another snag pops up when it is revealed that Nick is under police supervision in the hospital. Connie plows forward with his improvisation, but it becomes more and more obvious that he is not going to pull off his scheme, what with law enforcement always nearby and the caprices of fate constantly messing with him. It all adds up to a night of drugs, mistaken identity, and an empty amusement park in a land where cliché need not apply.

The joys of Good Time – and its biggest weakness – are aesthetic. The Safdie brothers exclusively favor extreme close-ups for conversations and kinetic camera movement when characters go from here to there. The shot selection, combined with the grainy digital cinematography and bass-heavy synth score, create a sensorially overwhelming experience that too few films attempt. The photography does get into a bit of trouble whenever the action moves into especially dark corners, rendering it nearly impossible to make out anything that is happening. That is possibly intentional, but it is not advisable. But in a film with this much clarity and consistency of vision, that is only a minor quibble.

Good Time is Recommended If You Like: Robert Pattinson’s auteur collaborations, Miami Vice, The economic desperation of Don’t Breathe

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Dye Packs

This Is a Movie Review: Aubrey Plaza Stops You Cold in the Instagram Tragicomedy ‘Ingrid Goes West’

August 8, 2017

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

Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Wyatt Russell, Billy Magnussen, Pom Klementieff

Director: Matt Spicer

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rating: R for Cosplay Hanky-Panky, Surprise Cocaine, and an Amateur Kidnapping

Release Date: August 11, 2017 (Limited)

An early montage of Instagram posts in Ingrid Goes West features Elizabeth Olsen reading out loud the entirety of the captions. This is jarring for a couple of reasons, partly because captions are not designed to be spoken aloud and mainly because the emoji are given concrete descriptions. I would argue that such straightforwardness is antithetical to the spirit of emoji, whose meanings are often implicitly understood but generally maintain a level of fluidity. Similarly, social media posts purport to present a certain specific message, but there are layers of further meaning lurking underneath.

People like Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) interpret public personae with too much unwavering conviction, overly certain that an interaction with a virtual fan is an invitation to become a flesh-and-blood friend. But what Ingrid Goes West suggests is, maybe that is not exactly what she believes. Maybe that rigidity is just a coping mechanism because the alternative is too complicated to handle. Ingrid becomes obsessed with Taylor Sloane (Olsen) not just because her Instagrams of avocado toast represent the height of L.A. cool, but mainly because of the illusion that her life is perfectly put-together. To someone who is obviously mentally ill (and thus whose brain does not allow any stability), that is intoxicating.

Ingrid Goes West is not a condemnation of Instagram, not really. It is just the medium through which some unhealthy behavior that would still exist otherwise happens to be taking place. Still, if you are wrapped up in it, it is an overwhelming medium. What is fascinating about Plaza’s performance is that her excessive social media use does not drive her to make Ingrid excessively fake, but rather unnervingly real. True, she makes “friends” under false pretenses, but her capacity for genuine relationships and deep cavern of pain are what stick with you.

Ingrid Goes West is Recommended If You Like: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The King of Comedy

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Avocado Toasts

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