This Is a Movie Review: ‘The Big Sick’ is the Best Romantic Comedy in Years

June 20, 2017

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

Starring: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Ray Romano, Holly Hunter

Director: Michael Showalter

Running Time: 119 Minutes

Rating: R for Adults and Comedians Talking Like Adults and Comedians

Release Date: June 23, 2017 (Limited)/Expands July 14, 2017

The Big Sick follows the classic rom-com template in a lot of ways despite not  resembling any other entry in the genre in any obvious fashion. But if you look close enough, that formula is there. There’s a meet-cute, a dramatic misunderstanding, and a climactic reunion. It is usually that middle portion when lesser rom-coms start to become annoying or even offensive, but when the miscommunications happen because one half of the central couple is in a coma, the struggles along the way to that happy ending become a lot more understandable.

Based on the real-life courtship of comedian Kumail Nanjiani (who plays a fictionalized version of himself) and his co-writer/now-wife Emily V. Gordon, The Big Sick is an astute portrayal of culture clash, modern romance tics, and the workaday stand-up comedy lifestyle. Kumail hits it off with Emily (Zoe Kazan) after she kinda, sorta heckles him, they go back to his place so that they can hook up and he can show her some cool obscure genre flicks like The Abominable Dr. Phibes (she teasingly takes him to task for testing her pop culture tastes). Soon enough they are basically inseparable. Alas, Kumail has been keeping Emily a secret from his parents because he comes from a traditional Pakistani family that practices arranged marriage, so any future with her comes with a risk of being ostracized. This would all be enough conflict on its own, but on top of that, just after they break, Emily succumbs to a mysterious illness that leads to doctors placing her in a medically induced coma.

Classic rom-com humor tends to spring from witticisms and oddball characterizations, but The Big Sick’s most hilarious elements come from its knack for outrageous joke-telling. This is called playing to your strengths. Nanjiani is one of the most top-tier funnymen around today, and the rest of the film’s core stand-up crew are played by some reliable comedic heavy hitters (Kurt Braunohler, Aidy Bryant, Bo Burnham). The Big Sick wins you over because it goes broad and plentiful with its emotions. Every moment of worry over Emily’s health is counteracted with a big guffaw.

Nanjiani and company further distinguish themselves within the rom-com mold in how the make-up and reunion portion plays out. Kumail and Emily find themselves back to each other thanks mostly to the work he puts in with her parents, Terry (Ray Romano) and Beth (Holly Hunter). Romano brings the soulful gravitas he has made his specialty in his dramatic roles, but his comic chops are just as sharp as the young guns around him, and Hunter is the same spitfire we have loved for so long (her confrontation of a racist heckler is one of the film’s best scenes). While Kazan is unconscious for much of the narrative, she does not get shortchanged in the deal (SPOILER ALERT that is kind of given away by one of the film’s co-writers being alive), as she and Kumail still have to hash everything out once she is awake, which justifies the fairly lengthy running time (right around 2 hours). Ultimately, you can feel that every element of the story is in the right place; surely some elements were fictionalized, but the emotional truth is always full-to-bursting.

The Big Sick is Recommended If You Like: Knocked Up, Master of None, Ruby Sparks

Grade: 5 out of 5 Drop Ins

What Won TV? – June 11-June 17, 2017

June 18, 2017

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In this feature, I look back at each day of the past week and determine what shows “won TV” for the night. That is, I consider every episode of television I watched that aired on a particular day and declare which was the best.

CREDIT: ABC/Lou Rocco

Sunday – The $100,000 Pyramid, for Leslie Jones’ reaction
Monday – Better Call Saul
Tuesday – Downward Dog
Wednesday – Fargo
Thursday – AFI Life Achievement Award for Actress, Director, and Climate Change Denier Diane Keaton
Friday – RuPaul’s Drag Race: Extra Stressful Reunion Edition
Saturday – Orphan Black

This Is a Movie Review: Sharks Are Only Problem in ’47 Meters Down’

June 16, 2017

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

Starring: Mandy Moore, Claire Holt, Matthew Modine

Director: Johannes Roberts

Running Time: 85 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Getting the Ocean All Messy with Human Blood

Release Date: June 16, 2017

The premise of 47 Meters Down – two cage diving sisters must escape shark-infested water after falling to the ocean floor – sounds exactly like that of last year’s The Shallows, except underwater instead of on a rock. There is certainly enough room on the big screen for multiple bloodthirsty chompers. Jaws is the granddaddy that they must all bow down to, but some of its imitators have actually bit nearly as hard. But could it be possible to have two good ones in a row, released almost exactly one year apart, and so similar in their particulars (tightly contained single location, young female protagonists, Mexican resort setting)?

It turns out that even though 47 Meters Down has several sharks to The Shallows’ one, it is more about the terror of claustrophobia. With Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate’s (Claire Holt) oxygen tanks quickly running out, the threat of drowning is much more urgent. If you are easily disoriented, it would be wise to skip this one. The cinematography is only as coherent as necessary to illustrate how dire the girls’ situation is. The rest is a blur of pitch black and bubbles. Sure, the sharks do not make this any easier to bear, but the predicament would be plenty overwhelming without them.

This variety of horror can almost skate by on economy of premise, but a strong central performance is also essential. As the resident competent amateur, Holt plays her part straightforwardly. But the bigger narrative burden falls to Moore, who is notably miscast. To be fair, though, the role as written would be difficult for just about anyone to play. It mostly requires her to be hysterically crying over a life-risking predicament she never wanted to participate in in the first place. There is a reason why the best of this genre usually features the protagonists attempting (and usually succeeding) to do what they never thought possible.

47 Meters Down wins me over, at least partially, with its ending that feels ambiguous though it is not really ambiguous; it is clear what has happened, though it is inconclusive what the message is. This conclusion takes a few risks, but it also walks back on some of them. It is edgy, bittersweet, strange, and disorienting, but probably a bit more disorienting than it means to be.

47 Meters Down is Recommended If You Like: The Shallows, Facing Your Own Claustrophobia

Grade: 3 out of 5 Bends

Billboard Hot Rock Songs – Week of June 24, 2017

June 13, 2017

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Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart, and then I rearrange the top 25 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 25, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Imagine Dragons – “Believer”
2. Linkin Park ft. Kiiara – “Heavy”
3. twenty one pilots – “Heathens”
4. Imagine Dragons – “Thunder”
5. Rag’n’Bone Man – “Human”
6. Portugal. The Man – “Feel It Still”
7. Foo Fighters – “Run”
8. Lord Huron – “The Night We Met”
9. The Revivalists – “Wish I Knew You”
10. Imagine Dragons – “Whatever It Takes”
11. Arcade Fire – “Everything Now”
12. Paramore – “Hard Times”
13. Bleachers – “Don’t Take the Money”
14. Ocean Park Standoff – “Good News”
15. Electric Light Orchestra – “Mr. Blue Sky”
16. Soundgarden – “Black Hole Sun”
17. The Allman Brothers Band – “Midnight Rider”
18. Audioslave – “Like a Stone”
19. Fleetwood Mac – “The Chain”
20. Lana del Rey ft. The Weeknd – “Lust for Life”
21. Sir Sly – “High”
22. alt-J – “In Cold Blood”
23. Cold War Kids – “Love is Mystical”
24. Papa Roach – “Help”
25. Muse – “Dig Down”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. The Chain
2. Like a Stone
3. Human
4. Mr. Blue Sky
5. In Cold Blood
6. High
7. Black Hole Sun
8. Run
9. Feel It Still
10. Everything Now
11. Midnight Rider
12. Love is Mystical
13. Hard Times
14. Dig Down
15. Lust for Life

Billboard Hot 20 – Week of June 24, 2017

June 13, 2017

jmunney Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot 100, Music , , , Leave a comment

Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot 100, and then I rearrange the top 20 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 20, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee ft. Justin Bieber – “Despacito”
2. Bruno Mars – “That’s What I Like”
3. DJ Khaled ft. Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper, and Lil Wayne – “I’m the One”
4. Ed Sheeran – “Shape of You”
5. Kendrick Lamar – “Humble.”
6. Future – “Mask Off”
7. Lil Uzi Vert – “XO Tour Llif3”
8. The Chainsmokers and Coldplay – “Something Just Like This”
9. Zedd and Alessia Cara – “Stay”
10. Post Malone ft. Quavo – “Congratulations”
11. James Arthur – “Say You Won’t Let Go”
12. Julia Michaels – “Issues”
13. Imagine Dragons – “Believer”
14. Sam Hunt – “Body Like a Back Road”
15. Kygo x Selena Gomez – “It Ain’t Me”
16. Childish Gambino – “Redbone”
17. French Montana ft. Swae Lee – “Unforgettable”
18. Shawn Mendes – “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back”
19. KYLE ft. Lil Yachty – “iSpy”
20. Brett Young – “In Case You Didn’t Know”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. Redbone
2. Stay
3. Humble.
4. Unforgettable

Bob’s Burgers 7.22 Review: “Into the Mild”

June 12, 2017

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“You didn’t think the menstruation scene was too much?” “I think it would work without the bubble machine, but who am I to judge?” http://www.bubbleblabber.com/review-bobs-burgers-into-the-mild/

What Won TV? – June 4-June 10, 2017

June 11, 2017

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In this feature, I look back at each day of the past week and determine what shows “won TV” for the night. That is, I consider every episode of television I watched that aired on a particular day and declare which was the best.

Sunday – Amidst all the prestige, I think I actually liked Mike Tyson Mysteries the most.
Monday – Better Call Saul
Tuesday – Downward Dog
Wednesday – Fargo
Thursday – The AV Club
Friday – RuPaul’s Drag Race
Sunday – French Open Ladies Final, especially the part when the winner asked if she could brush her hair before the trophy ceremony.

Watch And/Or Listen to This: Kungs vs. Cookin’ on 3 Burners’ “This Girl”

June 10, 2017

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I wish I had heard this song when it came out so that I could have put it on my Best of 2016 list.

This Is a Movie Review: ‘The Mummy’ Reboot is Lifeless Except for the Rare Moments When It Embraces Its Goofy Side

June 9, 2017

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

Starring: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson, Russell Crowe

Director: Alex Kurtzman

Running Time: 110 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Getting Ur Freak On with Death

Release Date: June 9, 2017

I laughed derisively when the Universal globe logo spun around and gave way to the “Dark Universe” logo, but the joke was on me, as the best parts of this new interlocking cinematic franchise are the ones setting up its upcoming entries. More fundamentally, the reason the joke was on me was because I held out hope throughout The Mummy that something unique or especially thrilling might happen.

As far as reboots go, once again resurrecting the Egyptian tomb-dwellers is far from an outrage. This undead crew is part of the cinematic and larger cultural collective unconscious, so there is plenty of room for new generations of storytellers to add their spin. But this particular version of The Mummy is maddening because it never establishes a convincing reason for why it should exist in the first place.

There is a fairly clean setup in which the Ancient Egyptian Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) makes a deal with Set, the god of Death, but then is defeated and laid to rest thousands of years to become the title villain. Then Tom Cruise swoops in as low-rent Indiana Jones Nick Morton and slips open her tomb, thus unleashing the Pandora’s box of the Dark Universe. So far, so reasonable. But then the story gets bogged down in mythical mumbo-jumbo about daggers and prophecies and whatever. Universal so obviously wants to copy the success of Marvel, but it is not going to do that by following its worst habit of focusing way too much on the MacGuffins. Are there mythological nerds out there who actually care about this minutiae?

All this plot-centric gobbledygook can be forgiven if The Mummy can provide the genre thrills, but the results in that department are mostly meh. Cruise is as game as always, but the action, while competently shot and coherently edited, is not especially memorable. The one mildly saving grace comes from the stabs at horror. Boutuella’s snake-like body and shadowy face provide a canvas for some decently scary images, as her pupils split into two pairs and her corpse decomposes into a dusty pile of bones (reminiscent of the effects of drinking from the wrong grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).

Alas, that is all inconsequential, because the real purpose of The Mummy is prologue to a series of tales in which Dr. Jekyll is the de facto Nick Fury. Russell Crowe plays the good doctor with a motivation apparently split between defeating monsters or assembling them. That dichotomy is potentially interesting and fits the character, but it is a distraction from the actual movie it is in.

At the beginning of this review, I said that I was somehow excited for the rest of the Dark Universe, but mulling everything over, I should probably temper my anticipation, though I still hold out a smidgen hope. The Mummy’s conclusion indicates that the next entries might actually kick back and have more fun by giving extra screen time to characters like Morton’s partner Chris Vail, brought to screeching, howling life by Jake Johnson (New Girl fans will be confused every time he calls Cruise “Nick”). For its lead character, The Mummy could have really used with more off-kilter energy. Cruise can be edgy, but he is too straightforward to match the hysterical, almost Abbott and Costello-esque vibe that Johnson employs to intermittently resuscitate this DOA franchise to life.

The Mummy is Recommended If You Like: Tom Cruise-related schadenfreude, Jake Johnson (though you must be able to endure long stretches without him)

Grade: 2 out of 5 Decompositions

This Is a Movie Review: The Partnership Between ‘Megan Leavey’ and Bomb-Sniffing Rex is One for the Ages, Elevating an Otherwise Ho-Hum Biopic

June 7, 2017

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

Starring: Kate Mara, Edie Falco, Ramón Rodríguez, Common, Tom Felton, Bradley Whitford

Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite

Running Time: 116 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Medium-Grade Explosives Injuries

Release Date: June 9, 2017

There is plenty of research and apocryphal evidence suggesting that dogs experience genuine emotions and form interspecies bonds much the same way that humans do. This always comes with the caveat that we can never exactly know the accuracy of those conclusions, as none of us has ever literally been inside a dog’s head. Most of the research I have encountered has included little, if any, reference to military bomb-sniffing dogs, which is a bit of a lost opportunity as that high pressure occupation surely has a noteworthy effect on the canine psyche. But at least now we can examine the compelling evidence of Marine Corporal Megan Leavey and her dog Rex.

Megan Leavey is a fairly straightforward military story, but it distinguishes itself with its high-class casting and its crew of sniffers. Kate Mara is sufficiently lived-in as the title character, imbuing actual personality into voiceover about how she needs to escape her boring New York town. As her parents, Edie Falco and Bradley Whitford do as much as they can with underwritten, limited screen time. And a fellow soldier (Ramón Rodríguez) strikes up decently sizzling chemistry with Leavey, despite the extent of their attraction consisting of an opposites attract thing where she’s a Yankees fan, and he’s a Mets fan.

But forget about the humans, we’re here to talk about Rex! We can also discuss Megan a little, so long as she bonds sufficiently with Rex. Obviously, she does, given the film’s whole premise. The two save a lot of lives in their bomb detection efforts and in the process grow as close as any human and dog experiencing intense stress together could.

After retiring from the service, Leavey fights through bureaucracy all the way to the U.S. Senate to change Rex’s “unadoptable” classification. It is not hard to get the audience on your side in such a mission, but it can be challenging to avoid schmaltz. This film makes you tear up, but it also earns your respect. Megan enters therapy to deal with her PTSD and her grief over missing Rex, and both ailments are treated with the dignity that they deserve. Their ultimate reunion is affecting not just because it is always adorable to cuddle a dog, but because Mara thoroughly convinces us that Leavey really did learn how to love from Rex.

Megan Leavey is Recommended If You Like: The Hurt Locker, American Sniper, Homeward Bound

Grade: 3 out of 5 Good Boys

 

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