Mini-Movie Review: ‘The Hustle’ is Too Loud and Outrageous to Pull Off a Satisfying Con

May 9, 2019

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CREDIT: Christian Black/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson, Alex Sharp, Ingrid Oliver

Director: Chris Addison

Running Time: 94 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Crude Makeup Jobs and Exaggerated Appetites

Release Date: May 10, 2019

Successful movies about con artists pull cons on their audiences, and we thank them for it, because that is how they derive their entertainment value. So as someone on the hunt for entertainment value, it is my solemn duty to sadly report that The Hustle (a gender-flipped remake of 1988’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) struggles mightily to keep its viewers guessing. There are very few surprises along the way until the very end, and you’ll probably be able to surmise the big reveal if you’ve seen the original, or if you’re just savvy enough with the genre. So that leaves Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson to do what they can by bouncing off against each other, which they do by leaning way too hard into their typical character types. Let’s put it this way: this is a movie in which someone eats a French fry that’s been dipped in toilet water, and there’s no good narrative reason for it. If that tickles your funny bone, then good on you, but it’s not especially relevant to any con job.

The Hustle is Recommended If You Like: Sticking raunchy humor into a genre where it might not fit

Grade: 2 out of 5 Sob Stories

Movie Review: ‘Detective Pikachu’ the Movie Demonstrates Its Potential Worth as a TV Show

May 8, 2019

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CREDIT: Warner Bros./Legendary

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith, Kathryn Newton, Ken Watanabe, Bill Nighy, Chris Geere, Suki Waterhouse, Omar Chaparro, Rita Ora

Director: Rob Letterman

Running Time: 104 Minutes

Rating: PG for Explosions, Lightning Bolts, and Suspicious Gas

Release Date: May 10, 2019

The promise of a significant chunk of ’90s has been crystallized in the form of Detective Pikachu. Pokémon is a franchise that has endured for decades, but unlike say, Star Wars or the Muppets, it is not the sort of property that its fans continue to love, or love in the same way, as they grow older. Instead, it is tinged with nostalgia at the same time that it enthralls subsequent generations with new chapters. With its mix of live-action humans and CGI monsters and its expansive approach to Pokémon mythology, Detective Pikachu takes a rather meta stance towards a significant piece of culture. I enjoyed watching it, but I also had the sense that it was not as perfectly constructed as it could have been. It soon dawned on me that there was so much potential Pokémon goodness missing from this world that could be fleshed out in a TV version.

What I’m saying here is that I would love it if it turns out that Detective Pikachu is just the first chapter and that we get a new mystery for the adorable electric mouse to solve every week, with a few more big-screen adventures as well if anything gargantuan turns up. Surely Pika’s deerstalker hat of choice points to his sartorial inspiration as a possible model to follow for ongoing detective work. There is just so much untapped potential here in Ryme City, a land in which humans and Pokémon live alongside each other on equal terms. It’s not unlike Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but a lot more adorable. With hundreds of Pokémon available to play around with, necessarily only a small percentage are spotlighted. But more could have had their moment to shine, and hopefully more will.

But the Pokémon who do get their chance to shine give us some delightful, occasionally anarchic deployments of their unique powers, especially a frustrating charades-based interrogation with a Mr. Mime. What makes Detective Pikachu work as well as it does is its total lack of winking within its meta framework. As the voice of the title crimesolver, Ryan Reynolds is basically doing a PG version of Deadpool, which turns out to be just subdued enough to be plenty palatable. Among the rest of the cast, Kathryn Newton stands out as an underpaid digital news intern who is basically a doing an impression of a mix between a noir femme fatale and a His Girl Friday-type. Occasionally the film gets bogged down in heavy mythology that may be too much for even some Pokémon devotees, but when it maintains its full sense of playfulness, it is a commendably unique cinematic achievement.

Detective Pikachu is Recommended If You Like: Pokémon with a spritz of Minions and a soupçon of Deadpool

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Deerstalker Caps

Mini-Movie Review: ‘The Biggest Little Farm’ is an Almost Too Perfectly Inspiring Documentary Tale of Triumph

May 7, 2019

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CREDIT: NEON

Starring: John Chester, Molly Chester, Todd the Dog, Emma the Pig, Greasy the Chicken

Director: John Chester

Running Time: 91 Minutes

Rating: PG for Coyotes Attacking Livestock and Mud- and Manure-Based Messes

Release Date: May 10, 2019 (Limited)

In 2011, John and Molly Chester moved out of their cramped Los Angeles apartment to make a go of it on two hundred unkempt acres in Ventura County. They had a dream of doing things a little differently, an alternative, if you will, to the factory farms typical of modern American agriculture. Luckily for us, John is a documentary filmmaker, and he had the cameras rolling for much of the journey.

The Biggest Little Farm is the document of their ultimate triumph over great odds. Whenever a new problem arises and seems intractable (not enough rain, too much rain, relentless predators, thoughtless pests), the Chesters somehow manage to consistently turn crises into opportunities. It almost feels a little too perfect. To be fair, we do see the struggle, but I would have liked to have seen even more of it. We could have gotten really deep in the process of the problem-solving. Oh well, maybe that’s what the special features are for. It would have been tough to fit all that in a ninety-minute package. As it is, though, what we have is a valuable record of the passage of time and its truly transformative possibilities. John has a preternaturally keen eye for capturing the wondrous chronological workings of nature, and the result is inspiring cinema that shows that maybe, just maybe, uprooting everything can work out just like we need it to.

The Biggest Little Farm is Recommended If You Like: Lifestyle transformations, Videos of animals giving birth

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Promises

Mini-Movie Review: ‘Tolkien’ is Fairly Inessential Bio-Cinema

May 7, 2019

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CREDIT: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, Colm Meaney, Derek Jacobi, Anthony Boyle, Patrick Gibson, Tom Glynne-Carney, Craig Roberts

Director: Dome Karukoski

Running Time: 111 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Flashes of World War I

Release Date: May 10, 2019

Would you be intrigued to know that some of the elements of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s actual life? The biopic Tolkien is counting on it, although it is not especially committed to that idea. The legendary English fantasy writer (as played dutifully by Nicholas Hoult) is haunted by memories of World War I with rather dragon-esque fire in the sky, and he has a tight group of schoolmates that one might call a fellowship. But beyond those (easily identifiable, not particularly cinematic) connections, this is a fairly straightforward story about a boy of modest, tragic (Dickensian, even) origins who made good. It is a life well-lived, but not necessarily captivating at every little moment. But at least his romance with his future wife Edith (Lily Collins) is compelling, built as it is on mutual respect and fascination. The emotions in their declarations of love are not atypical for the genre, but the language is unique and heartfelt. Focusing the whole movie on this intimate love story might have been a more inspired choice.

Tolkien is Recommended If You Like: Tolkien completism, The less interesting story behind the story

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Cellar Doors

My 2019 Tribeca Film Festival Adventure

May 6, 2019

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Photo Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival

Another spring, another Tribeca Film Festival. As is my custom, I took in a few films at the Lower Manhattan fest, and now I am here to report back to you what I thought of the offerings. Read on to discover what was in store in my 2019 Tribeca Film Festival Adventure!

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Mini-Movie Review: Olivier Assayas Imbues ‘Non-Fiction’ with Fascinating Conversations and Boring Affairs

May 2, 2019

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Courtesy of IFC Films

Starring: Guillaume Canet, Juliette Binoche, Vincent Macaigne, Christa Théret, Nora Hamzawi

Director: Olivier Assayas

Running Time: 108 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Sex Here, Some Sex There

Release Date: May 3, 2019 (Limited)

We may be living in a decidedly digital age, but believe it or not, there are still people in 2019 who write honest-to-goodness books. Olivier Assayas’ French relationship dramedy Non-Fiction ponders what the Internet hath wrought on the world of writing by way of examining the life of a literary editor. This film is hardly the condemnation of modern technology that premise might suggest, though. Instead, it features thoughtful conversations about how online discourse has actually amplified writing and maybe even improved it overall. A series of discussions about the status of literature may sound boring to some, but at least Assayas and his actors bring the necessary gusto to their dialogue. Alas, Non-Fiction eventually just devolves into a series of affairs whose consequences feel paper-thin and that do not really have anything to do with the literary industry, beyond the fact that some of the people involved coincidentally happen to work in that business.

Non-Fiction is Recommended If You Like: French people constantly talking and/or sleeping with each other

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Rejections

This Is a Movie Review: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

April 25, 2019

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CREDIT: Amazon Studios

As the movie with perhaps the most tortured backstory in the history of cinema, it is unsurprising that The Man Who Killed Don Quixote incorporates plenty of elements about the difficulty of mounting a massive production. Of course, as it revolves around a man who is convinced that he is actually Cervantes’ title adventurer after starring in an adaptation of the novel, it was always going to be somewhat meta. I don’t think Terry Gilliam taps into anything especially uniquely profound in this regard, but it does feel like he is facing the plain truth right in its face. I have made a few short films myself, and I have a brother and plenty of friends who have worked in film and TV, so I understand the instinct to incorporate what’s going in your life into the films you make. Thus, in the end, this whole quixotic endeavor feels oddly comforting to me.

I give The Man Who Killed Don Quixote A Hug and a Lullaby.

Movie Review: ‘The Curse of La Llorona’ Puts Mexican Folklore to Some Scary Good Use

April 18, 2019

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CREDIT: Warner Bros.

Starring: Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velásquez, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Roman Christou, Marisol Ramirez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Tony Amendola

Director: Michael Chaves

Running Time: 93 Minutes

Rating: R for Intense Horror Makeup, Drowning, Skin Burns, and Some Gunshots

Release Date: April 19, 2019

It’s generally promising when a horror movie grounds itself in some well-crafted folklore, and The Curse of La Llorona offers a bit of an emotional doozy. Originating in Mexico, the tale of La Llorona (“The Weeping Woman” in English) is of a mother who drowned her two sons after becoming enslaved by a blind rage from discovering her husband with another woman. She now lurks the spirit world in a white gown, taking other children as her own and often drowning them as well. A notice posted by the studio outside the theater assured me that La Llorona is indeed somewhere out in the real world. You don’t have to believe in ghosts to accept that as effective showmanship. This is a monster with a formidable motivation, enough to make you go, “Well, what are we going to do if she targets us?”

The standoff comes to Linda Cardellini as a widowed mother working as a social worker in 1973 Los Angeles. She first encounters La Llorona through her work with children living in unsafe homes. If you want to, you can dig into the subtext about the entanglement of domestic abuse and folklore. But this film is more about the surface thrills of discovering just how the boogeyman will pop up when someone closes a bathroom cabinet or opens up an umbrella. If you’re looking for camera tricks that say “Boo!”, La Llorona will scratch that itch. It also excels in some surprisingly goofy tension-breaking, especially when Raymond Cruz (Tuco of Breaking Bad) shows up as an ex-priest mystic man to exorcise some evil spirits by rubbing eggs all over the house. Weirdly enough, that moment makes sense in context. Bottom line: La Llorona efficiently pulls off its weirder-than-expected approach with a confident use of the standard horror toolkit.

The Curse of La Llorona is Recommended If You Like: Mama, Annabelle, The power of the crucifix

Grade: 3 out of 5 White Gowns

Movie Review: Penny Lane’s Doc ‘Hail Satan?’ Makes an Impish Case for the Fullness of Religious Tolerance

April 16, 2019

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CREDIT: Magnolia Pictures

Starring: Lucien Greaves

Director: Penny Lane

Running Time: 95 Minutes

Rating: R for Religious Nudity

Release Date: April 17, 2019 (New York)/April 19, 2019 (Los Angeles)

After watching the documentary Hail Satan?, I am seriously considering joining the Satanic Temple, even though I have been perfectly happy all my life as a Roman Catholic. Maybe I can have it both ways. If dual national citizenship is a thing, then why can’t dual religious membership also be?

Hail Satan? is directed by Penny Lane, who became a Satanic Temple member herself after shooting wrapped. The Temple does not worship the Christian conception of the devil (though in some ways its teachings are based on an alternate interpretation of the Bible), nor does it promote unseemly practices like blood orgies or human sacrifice. It is also separate from the LeVeyan Satanism of the Church of Satan that has been around since the 1960s, though it does share some similar tenets. The Satanic Temple was co-founded in 2013 by Malcolm Jarry and Lucien Greaves, the latter of whom serves as the group’s spokesperson and the primary voice of Hail Satan? Greaves is eminently logical and boundlessly patient, making him a convincing salesperson to the intellectually disaffected and a compelling personality to base a documentary around.

For many, the appeal of the Satanic Temple is that it avoids dogmatism while offering the community of organized religion that wouldn’t be a part of a fully atheistic lifestyle. And save for that communal aspect, much of the Temple’s purpose is civic activism, in the form of holding an American society accountable to its ideals of religious tolerance. Much of the documentary focuses around efforts to erect a statue of the goat-headed, bewinged Baphomet outside the Oklahoma and Arkansas State Capitols alongside Ten Commandments monuments in the name of making it clear that the government is not playing favorites when it comes to religions. What could come off as trollish in less thoughtful hands instead comes off as the highest form of patriotism from the Satanic Temple. Even when some cracks start to show within the Temple’s ranks (as they almost inevitably do in any organization that grows to a certain size), it is gratifying to witness the portrait of a group living up to its own ideals.

Hail Satan? is Recommended If You Like: Going Clear, Religious freedom, Governments living up to their constitutional ideals

Grade: 4 out of 5 Baphomets

 

This Is A Movie Review: The Beach Bum

April 12, 2019

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CREDIT: NEON and VICE Films

There are a lot of bare breasts in The Beach Bum. In the interest of naked parity, I must report that there is sadly not a whole lot of corresponding male nudity, although we do get a peek at Matthew’s McConaughey while he’s taking a drunken leak. This movie is basically the diary of a hedonist in Florida, and frankly, it could have been even more hedonistic, though it is having plenty of fun with itself in its shaggy structure. There actually does seem to be a bit of a message here, something about whether or not great men should be given the rope they’re often given to make great art, as Moondog’s shenanigans are sort of excused while he’s encouraged to write his next brilliant poetry collection. But this is also the movie in which Snoop Dogg plays a character named “Lingerie” and Martin Lawrence gets his foot bitten off by a shark, and those things seem just as important as any high-minded social consciousness.

I give The Beach Bum An Agreement to Drink a Few Sips of PBR.

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