The Fascinatingly Conflicted ‘Bombshell’ Documents the Downfall of Roger Ailes

December 9, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle SMPSP

Starring: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Rob Delaney, Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Liv Hewson, Allison Janney, Malcolm McDowell

Director: Jay Roach

Running Time: 108 Minutes

Rating: R for Powerful Men Behaving Badly

Release Date: December 13, 2019 (Limited)/Expands December 20, 2019

Most of the audience who will see Bombshell are probably not regular Fox News viewers. Although I don’t want to assume anything too definitively. Maybe there are actually some people who have the mental capacity to watch both a notoriously conservative news network and a movie that is fundamentally critical about it. Bombshell makes a similar argument against rushing to judgment when being critical seems like the most obvious correct approach to take, especially in one key scene when a woman confronts Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) in a grocery store, and Carlson shoots back about the virtue of treating with respect the people you disagree with. That could easily be a shallow bromide, but when you consider what Carlson is going through, it has unexpected resonance.

What Carlson is going through is a fight against the systematic misogyny at Fox News, a workplace whose initiation for its female employees apparently includes a signature piece of harassment from founder Roger Ailes (a gluttonously made-up John Lithgow). After Carlson is let go from the network in 2016, she files a lawsuit alleging harassment against Ailes, prompting the other women at Fox News to consider if they will support her. Many of them are reflexively Team Roger, but a few of them actually have a crisis of conscience, especially Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and a fictional character named Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie).

The filmmaking trick here is generating empathy, which is generally pretty easy to do for people who have clearly been harassed and abused. But matters are complicated by the fact that these women so resolutely insist that they’re not feminists as they come to terms with speaking out against the misogyny they’ve endured. I certainly believe it is possible to extend humanity to someone you deeply disagree with, but the struggle is even deeper than that. Even if these women leave and renounce their employer, they can’t ever escape the mark of having once worked at Fox News, so far removed is the network from the rest of the media landscape. It’s a sort of original sin that traps them in an infinite labyrinth. For a film that could have so easily been straightforward in many ways, I appreciate the complexity at its heart.

Bombshell is Recommended If You Like: Feeling disgusted and empathetic at the same time

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Lawsuits

Jeff’s Wacky SNL Review: Jennifer Lopez/DaBaby

December 8, 2019

jmunney Saturday Night Live, SNL Weekly Recaps, Television , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Rosalind O’Connor/NBC

If it’s the end of a decade or the start of a new one, it must be time for Jennifer Lopez to host SNL. Her first two times were in Februarys 2001 and 2010, and now we have her again in December 2019. Meanwhile, DaBaby is joining her for his first jaunt as musical guest. Hey, if he makes some more appearances after this one, are we going to have to start calling him “DaChild” and then “DaAdult”?

When 11:30 (or actually 11:29, according to the channel guide) rolls around, it’s time for the show to start, not because we’re ready, but because we can. (But if you record it, it’ll be waiting for you the very next morning on your DVR!) So as 11:30 hit on December 7, 2019, Alec Baldwin was unsurprisingly in his Trump costume, but he was joined at NATO (Grade: 2.5/5 Merkel Moans of Ecstasy) by a couple other guests, i.e. Jimmy Fallon as Justin Trudeau and Paul Rudd as Emmanuel Macron, and while it’s nice to see some old friends, I’m not in favor of guests always playing such high-profile roles. You gotta develop your farm talent! Although, the James Corden-as-Boris Johnson of it all wasn’t so bad, since he’s an SNL noob. J. Lo comes out for her Monologue (Grade: 3.5/5 Gravity Defiers), and we’re all expecting her to dance, WHICH SHE DOES!, but how many of us also expected her to rock that green dress again? Wowza.

More

Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 12/6/19

December 6, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Entertainment To-Do List, Music, Television , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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
–Little Joe (Limited Theatrically)
–Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Limited Theatrically)

TV
–Fuller House Season 5 Premiere (December 6 on Netflix) – I still hope to be fully caught up one day!
–Joe Pera Talks with You Season 2 Premiere (December 6 on Adult Swim) – I guess it’s Joe Week.
–The SpongeBob Musical: Live on Stage! (December 7 on Nickelodeon)
-“Crisis on Infinite Earths” Arrowverse Crossover (Begins December 8 on The CW)
–Mike Tyson Mysteries Christmas Episode (December 9 on Adult Swim)

Music
-Camila Cabello, Romance

Bring the Extinguishers When You See ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’

December 5, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , 3 Comments

CREDIT: Lilies Film

Starring: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami, Valeria Golino

Director: Céline Sciamma

Running Time: 120 Minutes

Rating: R for The Nudity That Emerges When Two Young Women Discover Their Passion for Each Other

Release Date: December 6, 2019 (Limited)/Expands February 14, 2020

When I saw the title Portrait of a Lady on Fire, I had a feeling this was going to be a passionate love story. That sense was certainly bolstered by a poster that showed exactly what was being advertised, as the embers whipped at the bottom of Adèle Haenel’s luscious green dress. Then as I finally began to watch the actual movie, I was introduced to the painting entitled “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” To which I thought, “Oh, is this the literal story behind the creation of the portrait?” And indeed it is, but that doesn’t mean the metaphorical meaning doesn’t also apply, and oh my, this movie is so very ravishingly inflammatory.

Héloïse (Haenel) is the titular lady on fire, but honestly, a more accurate title would have mentioned the second lady who is equally engulfed by a burning desire: Marianne (Noémie Merlant), the woman who has been commissioned to paint Héloïse. Taking place in the eighteenth century, this film is almost a two-hander, with Haenel and Merlant sharing the vast bulk of the screen time and just a couple other characters popping in occasionally. The settings are equally tight, as most of the running time takes place in a few locations that are not very far from each other on a remote island: the painting room, the bedroom, and the beach. These circumstances of close quarters make it feel almost inevitable that Héloïse and Marianne will develop a deep passion for each other. They also warp any sense of temporality. You might find yourself wondering how much time passes while they’re together. Days? Months? Hours? Weeks? Or maybe even decades, and they only appear to remain the same age because they are slipping through various dimensions.

Writer-director Céline Sciamma references and draws heavily upon the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the story of two lovers separated by death and fleetingly working their way back to each other through the whims of the underworld. Héloïse and Marianne are fully aware of the impernance of their entanglement, but they still enter into with the entirety of their souls. They take an almost Buddhist approach to their situation, existing both fully within and outside of time. It’s a fitting achievement for a film taking place within a painted portrait.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is Recommended If You Like: Persona, Cold War, Carol, Orpheus and Eurydice

Grade: 4 out of 5 Sitting Sessions

The 4 Types of TV-to-Film Adaptations

December 4, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Television , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: NBC

Adapting TV shows into feature-length films is one of the many regular ways that the cinema industry keeps the reboot process alive. As a devoted Human Being, I am particularly invested in the possibility of a Community adaptation to complete the #sixseasonsandamovie prophecy. This has led me to consider two important quandaries: 1) what different types of tv-to-film adaptations exist, and 2) which ones are most likely to result in box office and/or critical success? Over the course of pondering this topic, I have come up with the following taxonomy:

More

Ford v Ferrari = Friendship!

December 2, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Twentieth Century Fox

I’m not sure what the message of Ford v Ferrari is, and I’m not sure if that’s a mostly good or mostly bad thing. (We could be doing a lot worse in this world!) Is it about how you can’t ever stop American individualism from being as individual as possible? Or is it about how the United States won’t ever stay an underdog for long, even in pursuits usually dominated by the Europeans? If it’s either of those, then why is the main character an Englishman? Maybe it’s about how teammates stick with each other no matter what, and the whole American-ness of it all just be how it be. Certainly what stuck with me the most is the friendship between Christian Bale’s vroom-vroom-goer Ken Miles and Matt Damon’s vroom-vroom-guider Carroll Shelby. It’s an oft-contentious relationship, which only makes sense when you’re gearing up for a race that lasts a full day. Such competition, such support, such politics behind the whole affair – I saw it all!

I give Ford v Ferrari 240 out of 360 Laps.

‘The Irishman’ Is What an Irishman Does

November 30, 2019

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

CREDIT: Netflix

I would venture to say that the most essential moment of The Irishman is when Frank Sheeran is trying to tell Jimmy Hoffa that it has been decided it’s high time for his ambitions to come to an end, and their conversation consists almost entirely of tautologies like “It is what it is.” If you don’t know the context, this discussion is essentially meaningless. If you do know the context, the implications are clear, but it is still striking how much these guys are slaves to a thick, suffocating tangle of codes. That point is made abundantly clear in those few minutes. In just a few seconds, even. So does The Irishman, then, really need to be three and a half hours long? Well, other points are made throughout, but that length also underscores this major point. The guys who paint houses and their associates are imprisoned in a ceaselessly brutish life that can feel mightily oppressive, and we start to feel that, too. So I enjoyed The Irishman in much the same contemplative way I enjoyed Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I’m not so excited that I’m screaming about it, but I can imagine that it’ll stick with me in the ceaseless time to come.

I give The Irishman My Radical Empathy.

Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 11/29/19

November 29, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Entertainment To-Do List, Music , , , , Leave a comment

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

Movies
–Knives Out (Theatrically Nationwide)
–Queen & Slim (Theatrically Nationwide) – Check out Melina Matsoukas’ featured debut.

Music
-Beck, Hyperspace – This came out on the 22nd.

‘Queen & Slim’ is an All-Too-Conceivable Vision of 21st Century Outlaws

November 26, 2019

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

CREDIT: Andre D. Wagner/Universal Pictures

Starring: Danielle Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bokeem Woodbine, Flea, Chloë Sevigny, Indya Moore, Sturgill Simpson

Director: Melina Matsoukas

Running Time: 132 Minutes

Rating: R for The Violence, Profanity, and Sexuality of Highly Stressful Situations

Release Date: November 27, 2019

Viral moments of people of color being fatally wounded by police officers are a depressingly common occurrence in America, and they have become fodder for similarly discomfiting moments in fiction. So when Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) is able to fire back at Officer Reed (Sturgill Simpson) during a simple traffic stop, it feels like a moment a triumph as a sort of wake-up call to the audience that things can be done differently. But that sense of triumph quickly gives way to a feeling of queasiness, both because no loss of life is preferable to some loss of life (even when it’s in self-defense), and because that moment feels much more like the prelude to a greater tragedy rather than the end of one.

Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim are bound by circumstance moreso than passion or really any sort of mutual attraction. Their encounter with Officer Reed occurs on the way home from their initial meeting with each other, and while it may not be the absolute worst first date of all time, it is pretty damn tense. Slim is generally go-with-the-flow, while Queen is all coiled, hardened intensity. That fire and ice combination is not often ideal for romance, and it is even worse when two black people are pulled over by a trigger-happy officer of the law. Slim is so casual nearly to the point of carelessness, while Queen cites legal rights as she aggressively demands to know why the situation is being escalated. But no matter how they react to the officer, you get the sense that they were in a trap the moment he pulled them over.

After they leave Reed on the side of the road, they ditch their phones and attempt to flee to some semblance of safety. Meanwhile, their story becomes headline news and they begin to be embraced by a not-insignificant portion of the population as a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde. Accordingly, you then get the sense that most of Queen & Slim is just a series of delays until an inevitable tragic end. In that sense, it plays like a fit of existentialism, sort of a more viscerally terrifying riff on No Exit. I cannot argue for the possibility of a happier ending, because that would have been something more fantastical than director Melina Matsoukas and screenwriter Lena Waithe are aiming for. As it is, this is not the most cohesive sort of cinema, but it has a fractured feel of intimate moments contrasting with wide-open spaces that captures a broken, but occasionally beautiful slice of Americana.

Queen & Slim is Recommended If You Like: Melina Matsoukas’ music videography

Grade: 3 out of 5 Escapes

Movie Reviews: With ‘Knives Out,’ Rian Johnson Can Add the Whodunit to His Collection of Filmmaking Merit Badges

November 25, 2019

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

CREDIT: Claire Folger © 2018 MRC II Distribution

Starring: Ana de Armas, Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martell, Christopher Plummer, Noah Segan, Edi Patterson, Riki Lindhome, K Callan, Frank Oz, Raúl Castillo, M. Emmet Walsh

Director: Rian Johnson

Running Time: 130 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for A Few Explosions, Possible Poisonings, and (Attempted?) Stabbings

Release Date: November 27, 2019

If you’d like to dust off a musty old genre and guide it to unexpected new depths, then you might just want to call Rian Johnson. He’s already shown what new joys await in a neo-noir mystery, a time-travelling actioner, and the biggest franchise of all time, and now with Knives Out, he moves on to the whodunit, and the answer to that question is, “By golly, Rian Johnson has done it once again!”

Since every whodunit needs a murder victim and a set of suspects, Knives Out has a bounty of them. The recently dead man is super-wealthy mystery novelist (wink, wink?) Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), and the folks who might be responsible or maybe know something consist of his mother Wanetta (K Collins), his daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), Linda’s husband Richard (Don Johnson), their son Hugh Ransom (Chris Evans), Harlan’s son Walt (Michael Shannon), Walt’s wife Donna (Riki Lindhome), their son Jacob (Jaeden Martell), Harlan’s daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette), her daughter Meg (Katherine Langford), Harlan’s housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson), and his nurse Marta (Ana de Armas). While his employees generally get along with him, his family members all have reason to resent him (and they also keep mixing up which South or Central American country Marta is from). Naturally enough, there are also a couple of police detectives on hand (Lakeith Stanfield and Noah Segan) and an idiosyncratic private investigator named Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), who has been hired under mysterious circumstances.

CREDIT: Claire Folger

The trick that Knives Out pulls is that within twenty minutes, it reveals everything (or nearly everything) that happened in thorough detail. Harlan’s death is initially ruled a suicide, and we are shown pretty much unmistakably that he sliced his own throat, and everyone’s presence at that moment is accounted for. Done deal, then? Well, there’s still nearly two more hours of running time left. The script keeps itself honest thanks to one particularly telling character quirk: Marta’s “regurgitative reaction to mistruthing.” That is to say, whenever she lies, or merely even considers lying, she spews chunks. Thus, there is no other option than for the truth to similarly spill out, and there is no room for contrivances to keep the audience in the dark. But that having been said, information can be obscured and unknown unknowns can take some time to make themselves known. Ergo, Rian Johnson gives us the simultaneous joy of being let in on a little secret while also playing the guessing game.

CREDIT: Claire Folger

In addition to Knives Out‘s masterful mystery machinations, it additionally offers plenty of keen observations of human nature. There is the ever-timely message of the tension that emerges when the haves and have-nots bump against each other, as well as the chaos that can reign when fortunes swing wildly. Furthermore, there is an astute understanding of the difference between truth and honesty, and how the latter can help you survive when the former is hidden. All of this is to say, motivation matters a great deal in cinema, and in life.

Knives Out is Recommended If You Like: Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot, Logan Lucky

Grade: 4.5 out of 5 Colorful Sweaters

Older Entries Newer Entries