May 19, 2020
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Chris O’Dowd, Christopher Guest, Christopher Moynihan, Don Lake, Ed Begley Jr., Fred Willard, Jane Lynch, Mascots, Parker Posey, Susan Yeagley, Tom Bennett, Zach Woods
CREDIT: Scott Garfield/Netflix
I’d been meaning to watch Mascots for a while ever since it arrived on Netflix in 2016. Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries represent one of the most significant trends in American comedy, after all, so I need to stay on the up-and-up. So on May 16, 2020, I decided that it would finally be the day. And then after that personal resolution, I heard the news of Fred Willard’s passing. And well, I had no choice at that point. It was almost as if Willard himself had left me a note saying, “If I die, please have fun by watching this.” He seemed like the sort of guy who would leave behind such a message. Thanks for the laughs, Fred!
CREDIT: Scott Garfield/Netflix
So now that I’ve watched, I’ve decided to rank several of the main actors by how much their acting embodies the spirit of mascots, which consists of a mischievous mix of adorable and devious, plus a dash of uncanny valley. My evaluations are based mostly on Mascots, with some consideration given towards their performances in other Guest films (where applicable):
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February 12, 2020
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Ammon Jacob Ford, Downhill, Jim Rash, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julian Grey, Miranda Otto, Nat Faxon, Will Ferrell, Zach Woods, Zoë Chao
CREDIT: Jaap Buitendijk/Twentieth Century Fox
Starring: Will Ferrell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Miranda Otto, Zach Woods, Zoë Chao, Julian Grey, Ammon Jacob Ford
Directors: Nat Faxon and Jim Rash
Running Time: 86 Minutes
Rating: R for Bold Language That Pops Out on Vacation
Release Date: February 14, 2020
Sometimes a remake that otherwise seems pretty pointless can be useful for helping to clarify something that you may have missed in the original. That happened to me with the explosive conclusion of the Korean classic neo-noir Oldboy and Spike Lee’s 2013 remake, and now I have experienced it once again with Downhill, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash’s take on the 2014 Swedish cringe family comedy Force Majeure. There’s a climactic moment on a ski slope in Force Majeure that felt to me at the time meditative and ambiguous, but when I saw Downhill‘s take, the purpose of that incident was spelled out much more clearly. (Although reconciling these two as congruent requires a specific interpretation of Force Majeure.) There’s an argument to be made in favor of leaving the meaning as subtext, but I know I felt satisfied in the moment. As for the rest of this American version, let’s just say this material is very tricky to make entertaining, no matter what part of the world you’re in and no matter how many times it’s been told.
Force Majeure‘s inciting incident is an all-time doozy, and Downhill does it pretty much exactly the same. The Staunton family on vacation at a ski resort in the Alps when a supposedly controlled avalanche looks like it is about to turn deadly. In a moment of panic, Dad Pete (Will Ferrell) runs away from his wife Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and his two sons. Ultimately nobody is hurt, but the tension remains simmering for the entire vacation. This all plays out in set pieces that are quite often lifted directly from the original. Pete’s psyche breaks down as he cannot bring himself to admit his betrayal, while Billie insists on the version of the truth that she can so clearly see is the correct version, and friends and acquaintances look on horrified, profoundly flummoxed by the impossible task of lightening the mood.
It’s not necessarily a more Americanized version of the same thing, at least no more so than a version starring American actors must necessarily be. Instead, it’s a more mature version, as Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus are more than a decade older than their counterparts, Johannes Bah Kuhnke and Lisa Loven Kongsli, were when Force Majeure came out. The original dealt with new-ish parents struggling with their evolving self-identities, while Downhill is about a middle-aged couple despairing, “It can’t be this disastrous after we’ve come so far, can it?!” That’s a theme it would have been wise to lean into more instead of relying so much on the template it had ready to go. But as it stands, it is still a fascinating dive into the panic that arises when we realize that we may never fully know who we and our loved ones really are.
Downhill is Recommended If You Like: Hard Questions
Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Avalanches
December 18, 2017
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Alison Brie, Bob Odenkirk, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Carrie Coon, David Cross, Jesse Plemons, Matthew Rhys, Meryl Streep, Sarah Paulson, Steven Spielberg, The Post, Tom Hanks, Tracy Letts, Zach Woods
CREDIT: Niko Tavernise/Twentieth Century Fox
This review was originally posted on News Cult in December 2017.
Starring: Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, David Cross, Alison Brie, Sarah Paulson, Bradley Whitford, Jesse Plemons, Carrie Coon, Zach Woods
Director: Steven Spielberg
Running Time: 115 Minutes
Rating: PG-13 for Deadline-Related Light Profanity
Release Date: December 22, 2017 (Limited)/Expands Nationwide January 12, 2018
The First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees some fundamental freedoms, but certain limits on those freedoms are understood. Hate speech is not protected by free speech, for example, and human sacrifice is not protected by freedom of religion. But there is not quite the same shorthand for limits on a free press. Publishing anything demonstrably libelous is certainly unacceptable, but when is it inappropriate to print what is in fact true and has hitherto been hidden? This question is at the heart of so many present-day media matters, so in comes Steven Spielberg’s The Post, which examines a time when this conflict was a momentous occasion and not an everyday one.
In 1971, The Washington Post finds itself in possession of the Pentagon Papers, a trove of documents detailing the United States’ involvement in Vietnam over the past few decades. Executive editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) and his team of journalists think the public deserves to know this information. The federal government says it would be a felony to print it. There is no mistaking where The Post (both the paper and the film) comes down on this conflict. This is not new information and thus serves no imminent threat to American troops in Vietnam. The only harm it can cause is embarrassment for former presidents. The actual conflict that The Post grapples is the attempted reconciliation between ethical and business concerns.
The constant struggle of press outlets, even institutions as big as The Washington Post, is figuring out how to make money by delivering the truth. That struggle is writ large when making a public offering, which is what we’ve got here. Do you make a stronger case to your investors by laying low or by making a ruckus in the course of standing up for your principals? As publisher Katharine Graham, Meryl Streep is all contorted faces and knotted anxiety as she takes the lead to make the decision of printing the Papers or not. The drama is wrung in screwball fashion, with Bradlee appealing to her over the phone at the last a minute, as a gaggle of other interested parties hop on the line.
For as grand as The Post’s ambitions are, it is strange to consider that most of it takes place over the course of just one day. It all then feels almost inconsequential, but of course, certain individual moments can change the course of everything. When that is the case, there has probably been months, or even years, of work behind the scenes setting up those moments, as conveyed by an early scene of Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) gathering and absconding with the Papers. Also delivering the dynamic agita is Bob Odenkirk as Ben Bagdikian, an old buddy of Ellsberg’s who tracks down the delivery. Odenkirk’s comedic background is an asset – he moves about with a paranoid shuffle that is somewhere between absolutely necessary and hilariously unnecessary. Also rousing is a typesetting montage following the decision to publish the Papers. This mechanical peek at how things are done is a valuable reminder of underlying structure in much the same way that Michael Mann’s Blackhat spent so much visual space on the wires that undergird the Internet.
Ultimately, while The Post’s advocacy for journalism is timeless, its story feels small-scale, a prelude to the much bigger fallout of Watergate and all the modern-day scandals that use -gate in their nomenclature. The Richard Nixon of The Post is only ever seen from behind and through a window. His fight against the press was fought in the shadows, but today his same tactics are being employed right out in the open. The Post’s lessons are ones I hope everyone takes to heart, but I wonder (despair?) how useful they are when the sorts of secrets exposed by the Pentagon Papers are now nonchalantly tweeted every day.
The Post is Recommended If You Like: All the President’s Men, Spotlight, a Free Press
Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Sealed Documents
September 22, 2017
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Abbi Jacobson, Bob Logan, Charlie Bean, Dave Franco, Fred Armisen, Jackie Chan, Justin Theroux, Kumail Nanjiani, Lego, Lego Ninjago, Michael Peña, Ninjago, Olivia Munn, Paul Fisher, The Lego Ninjago Movie, Zach Woods
CREDIT: Warner Bros.
This post was originally published on News Cult in September 2017.
Starring: Dave Franco, Justin Theroux, Olivia Munn, Jackie Chan, Fred Armisen, Abbi Jacobson, Kumail Nanjiani, Michael Peña, Zach Woods
Directors: Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, and Bob Logan
Running Time: 101 Minutes
Rating: PG for Ripped-Off Lego Limbs and Feline-on-Toy Destruction
Release Date: September 22, 2017
If you want to learn how to nail down comic timing, you could do much worse than studying the repartee in The Lego Ninjago Movie. This second spin-off of the toy block film franchise and the first based on the speciality Ninjago line (which also already has its own long-running Cartoon Network TV show) should ostensibly be the most action-oriented of the series, but its cast ensures that it is instead defined by the cheeky humor that has buoyed each of the Lego films thus far. The voices of the high school-age core ninja group include improv and sketch veterans like Fred Armisen, Abbi Jacobson, Kumail Nanjiani, and Zach Woods. And their leader, Master Wu, is brought to life by the always comedically inclined martial arts legend Jackie Chan. As they protect their home city of Ninjago and seek to become one with the elements, they pop off quips like “Can I be the element of surprise?” and display their meta bona fides by complaining about Wu’s “needlessly cryptic metaphors.”
The thrust of the plot mostly revolves around Green Ninja Lloyd (Dave Franco) and his struggle against his father Lord Garmadon (Justin Theroux), a four-armed warlord seeking to conquer Ninjago who keeps mispronouncing (or correctly pronouncing?) his son’s name as “L-loyd.” Lloyd’s attempts to reconcile with the father who abandoned and forgot about him make for the dopily cliché stuff of legend. This is the same evil-father/chosen-one-son knockoff typical of so many Star Wars copycats. But of course, that dopiness is the point. In a world where love stories begin by opponents in war detecting unbearable beauty on opposite sides of the battlefield and the biggest hit on the radio is the weirdly personal “Boo Lloyd!,” fully embracing clichés only makes sense.
For those of you wondering how the real world intervenes in the block world this time around, it should be noted that there is a cute kitty cat who stomps around the town. Dubbed “Meowthra,” this feline is the secondary villain, the monster that indiscriminately and unknowingly ruins intricately designed block structures.
Where Ninjago falters is in its actions sequences. To be fair, its earthbound fighting moments have plenty of visual wit, but when the ninjas take to the skies, the aerial sequences are as unintelligible as the Transformers series at its worst. But that will only be a minor bother when you make it through to the end credits and fall in love with the latest buoyantly terrific song from a Lego movie.
The Lego Ninjago Movie is Recommended If You Like: Lego’s entire filmography, Star Wars father-son relationship parodies, Silicon Valley, Finding the humor in “Cat’s in the Cradle”
Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Ninjanuities
July 13, 2015
jmunney
Awards Shows, Emmys, Television
2015 Emmys, @midnight, Abbi Jacobson, Adam Arkin, Adam Driver, Adelaide Clemens, Aden Young, Alison Brie, Allison Janney, American Dad!, Amy Poehler, Amy Schumer, Andre Braugher, Android, Anna Chlumsky, Arrow, Aya Cash, Better Call Saul, Big Bird, Billy on the Street, Bob Odenkirk, Bojack Horseman, Britt Lower, Broad City, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Chris Geere, Chris Gethard, Chris Mckenna, Christina Hendricks, Christine Baranski, Claire Danes, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Community, Conan, Constance Wu, Craig T. Nelson, Dan Harmon, Danny Pudi, David Anders, Dominic West, Don Cheadle, Downer Ending, Downton Abbey, Dreaming of a White Porsche Christmas, Dwayne Johnson, Eden Sher, Edie Falco, Elena, Elisabeth Moss, Ellie Kemper, Emilia Clarke, Emily Bett Rickards, Emmys, Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television, Empire, Eric Andre, Eva Green, Fresh Off the Boat, Friends Furever, Game of Thrones, Girls, Homeland, House of Cards, House of Lies, Hugh Bonneville, Ilana Glazer, Inside Amy Schumer, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, iZombie, Jane Krakowski, Jeff Daniels, Jeffrey Tambor, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jim Carter, Jim Parsons, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Joel McHale, John Hawkes, Jon Voight, Jonathan Banks, Jordan Gavaris, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julianna Margulies, Julie Bowen, Justified, Kate McKinnon, Ken Jeong, Kether Donohue, Kevin Spacey, Key & Peele, Kroll Show, Lamorne Morris, Last Week Tonight, Laverne Cox, Lena Dunham, Lena Headey, Linda Lavin, Louie, Louis CK, Mad Men, Mae Whitman, Maggie Smith, Man Seeking Woman, Mandy Patinkin, Masters of Sex, Mayim Bialik, Mel Rodriguez, Michael McKean, Michael Rapaport, Michael Sheen, Michelle Dockery, MIchelle Obama, Milana Vayntrub, Modern Espionage, Modern Family, Mom, Nathan Fielder, Nathan for You, New Girl, Nurse Jackie, Orange is the New Black, Orphan Black, Other Space, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Penny Dreadful, Peter Dinklage, Pimento, Portlandia, Ray Donovan, Real Time, Rectify, Rhea Seehorn, Rob Schrab, Robin Wright, Rose McIver, RuPaul, RuPaul's Drag Race, Ruth Wilson, Sarah Steele, Saturday Night Live, Shameless, Silicon Valley, Susie Essman, Taraji P. Henson, Tatina Maslany, The Affair, The Big Bang Theory, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, The Eric Andre Show, The Last Man on Earth, The Middle, The Newsroom, The Promise, The Simpsons, The Tonight Show, Thomas Middleditch, Thomas Schnauz, Tim and Eric's Bedtime Stories, Timothy Olyphant, Titus Burgess, Tony Hale, Too Many Cooks, Traib, Transparent, Treehouse of Horror XXV, Ty Burrell, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Veep, Walton Goggins, Will Forte, William H Macy, You're the Worst, Zach Woods, Zooey Deschanel
For my detailed thoughts on my predictions and wishlists in the major Drama, Comedy, and Variety categories, check out these links:
–Comedy
–Drama
–Variety
Guest Actor, Comedy
John Hawkes, Inside Amy Schumer
Michael Rapaport, Louie
Chris Gethard, Parks and Recreation
Dwayne Johnson, Saturday Night Live
Guest Actress, Comedy
Susie Essman, Broad City
Guest Actor, Drama
Mel Rodriguez, Better Call Saul
Guest Actress, Drama
Allison Janney, Masters of Sex
Linda Lavin, The Good Wife
Directing, Comedy
Rob Schrab, “Modern Espionage,” Community
Directing, Drama
Adam Arkin, “The Promise,” Justified
Writing, Comedy
Dan Harmon and Chris McKenna, “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television,” Community
Writng, Drama
Thomas Schnauz, “Pimento,” Better Call Saul
Animated Program
Bojack Horseman – “Downer Ending”
American Dad! – “Dreaming of a White Porsche Christmas”
The Simpsons – “Treehouse of Horror XXV”
Commercial
Android – “Friends Furever”
Host – Reality/Reality Competition
RuPaul, “RuPaul’s Drag Race”
Interactive Program
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Main Title Design
Man Seeking Woman
Single-Camera Picture Editing, Comedy
Bojack Horseman – “Downer Ending”
Short-Format Live-Action Entertainment Program
Too Many Cooks
Billy On The Street With First Lady Michelle Obama, Big Bird And Elena!!!
Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series or a Variety Program
Community
Special Visual Effects in a Supporting Role
Man Seeking Woman – “Traib”
