‘The Report’ Details the Long Slog Towards Exposing Torture

November 11, 2019

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CREDIT: Atsushi Nishijima/Amazon Studios

Starring: Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Jon Hamm, Jennifer Morrison, Tim Blake Nelson, Ben McKenzie, Jake Silberman, Matthew Rhys, Ted Levine, Michael C. Hall, Maura Tierney, Dominic Fumusa, Corey Stoll

Director: Scott Z. Burns

Running Time: 118 Minutes

Rating: R for Depictions of Torture

Release Date: November 15, 2019 (Limited)

There’s a moment in The Report that might be what most viewers remember it for, in which the 2012 hunt-for-Osama bin Laden thriller Zero Dark Thirty is called out and basically scoffed at for implying that torture led to valuable intel in the war on terrorism. Despite this apparent antagonism, The Report and Zero Dark Thirty work well as companion pieces, offering somewhat parallel stories in the defining geopolitical conflict of the twenty-first century. I believe that the message of Zero Dark regarding the efficacy of torture is more complicated than any binary interpretation, and I actually think that the people behind The Report would agree, at least in terms of the existence of complications in the world. When a narrative is about a real-life group of people poring over thousands of government documents for months on end, you tend to find that the answers aren’t always quite so straightforward. But two things remain clear: torture is bad, and the people deserve to know that it happened.

The primary document sifter is Daniel Jones (Adam Driver), who was working as a Senate staffer for California Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening) while he investigated the CIA’s systematic use of torture in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The job is thuddingly labor-intensive, but Daniel is fully devoted to the task, and besides, the real challenge for him is getting this information out to the public over the protests of the forces who would prefer it be as redacted as possible or just completely hidden. The Report serves the entertainment value of presenting someone doing his job supremely competently, but it is also a bit of a slog. It is not exactly fun to spend so much time in windowless basements with Daniel, and his co-workers let him know that it’s not so great for him either. But for the good of mankind, this information needed to get out one way or the other. And if this story needed to be jazzed up into a big-screen adventure for people to become more aware of this miscarriage of decency, then The Report ought to be considered a succcess at least on that score.

The Report is Recommended If You Like: The truth being made public

Grade: 3000 of 5000 Documents

Can the Success of 1999’s Most Phenomenal Movies Be Repeated?

November 11, 2019

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CREDIT (Clockwise from top left): Artisan, Warner Bros., Lucasfilm, Buena Vista

Can we go back to 1999? It’s not just Charli XCX who’s feeling that way. Pretty much every movie studio would like to turn back the clocks 20 years. That annum deserves its iconic status, and that’s partly thanks to a quartet of box office successes that reached the level of phenomenon. Any film executive would kill to have one hit that fully enraptures the culture the way that The Matrix, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, The Blair Witch Project, and The Sixth Sense did, and somehow we got all four of those in one year (within five months of each other, no less). Their success stories are unique within the industry, and unique from each other. Is there any way that they could possibly be repeated now in a very different theatrical landscape? Let’s investigate!

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Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 11/8/19

November 8, 2019

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CREDIT: Adult Swim

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

Movies
–Doctor Sleep (Theatrically Nationwide)
–Last Christmas (Theatrically Nationwide)
–Noelle (Streaming November 12 on Disney+)

TV
–Rick and Morty Season 4 Premiere (November 10 on Adult Swim) – The show with perhaps the best episode titles finally returns. (“Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat” kicks us off.)
Disney+ Launch Alert!
–Forky Asks a Question Series Premiere (November 12 on Disney+)
–The Mandalorian Series Premiere (November 12 on Disney+)
–Pixar IRL Series Premiere (November 12 on Disney+)
–The World According to Jeff Goldblum Series Premiere (November 12 on Disney+)

‘Doctor Sleep’ Demonstrates That You Can Never Fully Outrun the Darkness of Your Childhood

November 7, 2019

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CREDIT: Warner Bros.

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyleigh Curran, Cliff Curtis, Carl Lumbly, Zahn McClarnon, Emily Alyn Lind, Bruce Greenwood, Zackary Momoh, Jocelin Donahue

Director: Mike Flanagan

Running Time: 152 Minutes

Rating: R for Creepy Nudity, Shotguns Fired at Supernatural Villains, and an Overall Generally Disturbing Vibe

Release Date: November 8, 2019

The end of 1980’s The Shining did not promise that all would be well for little Danny Torrance. But the opening act of Doctor Sleep is much more encouraging. Danny and his mom Wendy have made it out of the Overlook Hotel, but they haven’t quite escaped it. Danny is still being harassed by the spectral residents, but thanks to a few words of advice from the ghost of Dick Halloran (Carl Lumbly taking over for the late Scatman Crothers), he is able to firmly close the door on them and keep them at bay. But cut to thirty years later, and Dan (now played by Ewan McGregor) isn’t looking so good anymore. We meet him anew as an alcoholic getting brutally beaten up at a bar and stealing money during a one-night stand from a single mom after she stole money from him to buy cocaine.

I am not an alcoholic myself, so I do not know what it feels like to deal live with that disease. But now that I have seen Doctor Sleep, I imagine that alcoholism must resemble the experience of being constantly surrounded by relentless supernatural villainy. Or at least I imagine that’s what it feels like for Stephen King, who has been public about his struggles with the bottle and has used it for inspiration in his own work. How else to explain the prologue to Doctor Sleep, which feels like a happy ending, but is instead a red herring that leads into more than two hours of evil letting us know that it’s not done with us? It must be agony to endure all that pain when intellectually you know, as Danny does, how to fight it off but you just cannot bring yourself to do it.

But perhaps that understanding of the darkness is ultimately where Danny is able to draw his strength from. He certainly needs all of it, as there is a new threat in the form of Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), who leads a band of vagabonds who are basically energy vampires. They are not quite immortal, but they have lived for centuries by feeding off the life force of people with remarkable abilities. They have their sights set on thirteen-year-old Abra Stone (Kyleigh Curran), who exceeds perhaps even Danny with her mastery of the shining (which is basically a combination of telepathy and clairvoyance, as well as something akin to astral projection).

One of the biggest pleasures of the film version of The Shining was how it left so many of its striking images ambiguous, often cutting away before we had a chance to make sense of what was happening or even where we were spatially or temporally. Doctor Sleep is at its strongest when it follows this approach, and there are plenty of opportunities to do so as Danny and Abra commune via the shining. Even moments of revisiting specific settings from The Shining do not play as fan service, but rather, they have an ominous sort of “we shouldn’t be here, we’re playing with fire” vibe. The only major misstep is when writer/director Mike Flanagan’s script over-explains what is happening. I haven’t read the Stephen King novel that the film is based on, but King has a reputation of being a little wordy, and that seeps into the film a bit. But otherwise, Doctor Sleep is a solid frightener about how the darkness within human brains can be quite demandingly resilient.

Doctor Sleep is Recommended If You Like: The Shining, But the Stephen King Element More Than the Stanley Kubrick Element

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Mind Tombs

All the Extra-Sweet Holiday Decorations Can’t Disguise the Fact That ‘Last Christmas’ is Really About Doing the Work to Take Care of Ourselves

November 6, 2019

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CREDIT: Jonathan Prime/Universal Pictures

Starring: Emilia Clarke, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Emma Thompson, Lydia Leonard, Boris Isakovic, Peter Mygind

Director: Paul Feig

Running Time: 103 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Young Adults Getting Themselves Into Hot Mess Situations

Release Date: November 8, 2019

If you’re the type who likes to speculate before going to see a movie, then you may have surmised that a twist is afoot in Last Christmas. And it’s probably pretty close to (if not exactly) the twist you think it is, especially if you’ve noticed that in the trailer, nobody interacts with Henry Golding’s Tom besides Emilia Clarke’s Kate and if you’ve remembered the lyrics to the Wham! song that serves as this film’s namesake and inspired the plot. It’s not as if Emma Thompson and Bryony Kimmings’ script or Paul Feig’s direction is trying too hard to hide the reveal, as early scenes feature Tom using goofy evasive maneuvers (that nobody but Kate seems to notice) to avoid bumping into passing pedestrians. The success of Last Christmas does not hinge on the twist, thankfully, though I do wonder what it would have been like if it had showed its more hand earlier. The choice to keep things under wraps does make sense considering the story’s perspective, at least, and either way, the message about finding the inner strength to re-discover our best selves shines through.

The other big hook of Last Christmas is that Kate is in long-term recovery mode following a health scare a year earlier that necessitated a heart transplant. Physically, she seems to be doing just fine now, but mentally it’s another story. She appears to be suffering from undiagnosed depression, which is leading to a pattern of poor decisions: hooking up with a series of one-night stands, causing general destruction while couch surfing at her friends’ apartments, neglecting to lock up for the night while leaving work. Her current inability to fulfill the personality requirements of her job as a department store elf (under the employ of a shop owner who calls herself “Santa,” no less) could not be starker. Meanwhile, she’s also got plenty of stress emanating from her family, thanks to an overbearing mother (Thompson) who won’t stop calling her, a sister (Lydia Leonard) keeping her sexuality a secret from their parents, a father (Boris Isakovic) who systematically avoids conflict, and the long-term trauma of having grown up in the war-torn former Yugoslavia.

Thus, with everything so heavy in Kate’s life, I didn’t bat an eye at Tom’s saintly perfection, as this was exactly what she needed, and while skepticism can be healthy, it’s foolish to complain about something definitively good. He may suddenly show up without warning, but he knows exactly what to say to get Kate feeling like herself again. On top of that, he somehow manages to get by in this modern digitized world without carrying his phone around all the time and he (what else?) volunteers at a homeless shelter. His only shortcoming is that he has a habit of disappearing for days on end, only returning by some unpredictable whim. When he’s present, he provides the sort of emotional support that is essential for Kate right now and that we all require to get by as human beings. When he’s gone, it’s a test for her to learn that maybe she has that support within herself to get by on her own.

Last Christmas ends with Kate,, the full picture of health and 100% in the Christmas mood, putting on a little show in support of the homeless shelter. All her loved ones new and old are there to support her, and if that sounds a little too perfect, well, it probably is. We have at least seen Kate get to this point of fulfillment, so her triumph isn’t frustrating. But we haven’t quite spent the same time with her family to know that they’ve also been able to work through all their burdens. Maybe, though, we can assume that they too have had their own mysterious visitors who have helped them along, and then we can go on and sing some happy carols.

Last Christmas is Recommended If You Like: George Michael music, Some sort of combination of Love Actually, Fleabag, and BoJack Horseman

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Comical Eastern European Accents

The Semi-Autobiographical ‘Honey Boy’ Puts Shia LaBeouf’s Decades-in-Coming Therapy on the Big Screen

November 4, 2019

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CREDIT: Amazon Studios

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Noah Jupe, Lucas Hedges, FKA Twigs, Maika Monroe, Martin Starr, Natasha Lyonne (but only on the phone)

Director: Alma Har’el

Running Time: 93 Minutes

Rating: R for A Dad and a Young Son Using Way Too Much Profanity with Each Other

Release Date: November 8, 2019 (Limited)

Honey Boy is an almost-biopic, based on Shia LaBeouf’s preteen days as a child actor with a pushy, erratic father. I had not read any synopsis ahead of time, so I was unaware of this fact until the credits started to roll, so for me it was a nice little bonus that put everything into clearer focus. And we needed that perspective, because it’s exhausting to spend so much time in a motel with Shia stand-in Otis Lort (Noah Jupe) being emotionally abused the same way over and over by his balding, pot-bellied father James (LaBeouf doing a riff on his own dad). At least the rehab scenes with an older Otis (Lucas Hedges) offer some opportunities for a breakthrough. A particular highlight is his tête-à-tête with an as-stone-faced-as-usual Martin Starr about the nature of acting and sincerity (Otis, and presumably the real Shia, believes that day-to-day-living is just another form of acting).

While I found much of Honey Boy too unpleasant to fully embrace, its nakedly autobiographical nature is fascinating. It reminded me in particular of the Community Season 1 episode “Introduction to Film,” wherein aspiring filmmaker Abed makes a short documentary-fiction hybrid in which he covertly casts his friends as his divorced parents. Its experimental nature flat-out confounds his study buddies, but it leaves his usually cold father in a puddle of tears. So similarly, while I found Honey Boy off-putting, I can imagine that for LaBeouf and those close to him, this is exactly the sort of therapy they need. When he shows it to his dad, maybe it will prove to be the spark that leads to their relationship being healthier than it’s ever been.

Honey Boy is Recommended If You Like: Artists working through their familial demons in their art, That time when Shia LaBeouf watched his own movies

Grade: 3 out of 5 Cheap Motels

‘Countdown’ is Mostly Whatever Except When It Gets Its Demon-Fighting Groove On

November 1, 2019

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CREDIT: STXfilms

I love dorky PG-13 horror movies like Countdown. They only occasionally transcend the trappings of their formula, but they almost always have their shameless pleasures. I enjoy giving myself over to silly yet potentially evocative premises like an app that tells its users exactly how soon they are going to die. Am I fooled into believing that such an app could actually exist and be accurate? No, but I’m happy to pretend that I am. And I look forward to discovering the circumstances that make the main characters believe. The trouble comes when these pictures devolve into people just running around and screaming at each other, and that happens too often in Countdown. But then PJ Byrne shows up as a man of the cloth who got into the religious lifestyle because of the prospect of fighting demons, and he might just be the best cinematic priest I’ve ever seen.

I give Countdown 25 Demon-Fighting Latin Texts out of 50 Frantic Runs Through a Hallway.

Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 11/1/19

November 1, 2019

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CREDIT: HBO

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

Movies
–Harriet (Theatrically Nationwide) – Recommended to history teachers.
–Motherless Brooklyn (Theatrically Nationwide)

TV
–His Dark Materials Series Premiere (November 4 on HBO) – I might give this fantasy series a shot.
–The End of the F—ing World Season 2 (November 4 on Netflix) – I still have to finish Season 1, though!
–The Little Mermaid Live! (November 4 on ABC)
–CONAN Without Borders: Ghana (November 7 on TBS)

Music
-Cold War Kids, New Age Norms 1
-Jeff Lynne’s ELO, From Out of Nowhere

With ‘Motherless Brooklyn,’ Edward Norton Takes Us Back to the Era of Mid-Century Urban Gumshoes, with a Purpose

October 30, 2019

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CREDIT: Warner Bros.

Starring: Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Bobby Cannavale, Cherry Jones, Michael K. Williams, Ethan Suplee, Dallas Roberts, Leslie Mann, Josh Pais, Robert Wisdom, Fisher Stevens

Director: Edward Norton

Running Time: 144 Minutes

Rating: R for Involuntary and Voluntary Profanity, and a Classic Mix of Guns, Knives, and Fists

Release Date: November 1, 2019

Motherless Brooklyn is basically Chinatown but if the lead character had Tourette syndrome. You’ve got a bigwig public official trying to control the city’s municipalities, a woman with surprising and controversial parentage, and a protagonist who gets his face roughed up when he starts to get involved way over his head. Comparisons to one of the most acclaimed crime films of all time can make for impossible-to-meet expectations, but this directorial effort from Edward Norton proves that there is plenty of room to play around in this sandbox. The mysteries come hard and intriguingly as private investigator Lionel Essrog (Norton) uncovers a web of power and corruption in 1950s New York City. What was his mentor Frank (Bruce Willis) getting involved with when he got himself killed? Why is city planner Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin) the most powerful man in the city? Why do people within the orbit of young activist Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) keep finding themselves in deadly trouble? These are all compelling questions, and reason enough to give Motherless Brooklyn a go.

What might give some viewers pause, however, are Norton’s more unique directing and acting flourishes. Casting himself as someone who involuntarily spouts out a string of profanity and general word salad could certainly be controversial. But I think he handles it empathetically and sensitively, suggesting that we are all messed up in the head and that so much (or perhaps all) of life is the struggle to either keep that noise at bay or let it be part of who we are. Possibly even more controversial is the generally affected milieu embodied in the performances, music, and production design that basically shouts, “This is the 1950s!” It could play as indulgent nostalgia, but it avoids that pitfall by serving an essential thematic purpose, as Motherless explores what is lost when poor and minority neighborhoods are pushed aside in the name of urban beautification. Moses Randolph is a person who has somehow made himself a hero to the people while brushing away all the inconveniences that stand in his way of unmitigated power, while Lionel Essrog is forced to have his inconveniences be a constant part of his daily life. Take a wild guess which one of them is better company.

Motherless Brooklyn is Recommended If You Like: Chinatown, Mid-20th Century New York City

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Fedoras

‘Harriet’ is at Its Best When Emphasizing How Good Harriet Tubman Was at Her Job

October 29, 2019

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CREDIT: Glen Wilson/Focus Features

Starring: Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn, Janelle Monáe, Jennifer Nettles, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Clarke Peters, Zackary Momoh

Director: Kasi Lemmons

Running Time: 125 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for A Bevy of Insults and a Few Scenes of Brutal Violence

Release Date: November 1, 2019

As I began to watch Harriet Tubman biopic Harriet, the thought “Shouldn’t I be watching this in school?” passed through my mind. That is by no means an insult, but rather, it is an illustration of how my own experience (and the experience of many American schoolchildren) has primed me to feel towards a movie like this one. Tubman is an important figure in American history, so a film about her is a useful tool for history teachers to keep their students’ attention. In that sense, Harriet does not need to be a masterpiece (though bonus points if it is), it just needs to be historically accurate, or at least true to the spirit of its subject. On that count, I recommend Harriet to any teacher whose curriculum covers the era of abolition.

For everyone else who is not watching this movie in a classroom setting, you might still be excited because it has taken more than a hundred years for Tubman’s story to finally get the full-blown feature film treatment (though Ruby Dee and Cicely Tyson played her in earlier TV versions). Although, that excitement might be tempered by the difficulty of having to endure yet another movie viscerally showing the brutal treatment of the enslaved (as well as free black Americans). But I think the best way to appreciate Harriet is as a story of a person who does her job very well, i.e., the sort of character that Tom Hanks often plays. Cynthia Erivo proves that a woman and a person of color is just as capable of this role (not that any proof was necessary, given the historical record).

Tubman escapes to freedom on her own, safely travelling about a hundred miles by foot despite her illiteracy and the relentlessness of her slave master. She then goes on to help secure the freedom of hundreds of more slaves while pretty much matter-of-factly never losing any of her cargo, stunning her fellow conductors on the Underground Railroad with her success rate. But as the steady, burrowingly intense eyes on Erivo’s face tell you, this is just what she does. Slavery had to end at some point, and Harriet Tubman was as up for the job as she needed to be.

Harriet is Recommended If You Like: Glory, Sully, Bridge of Spies

Grade: 3 out of 5 Rescue Missions

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