Author Archives: matterspamer

REVIEW: Black Mass

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Black Mass 3

Black Mass
Directed by: Scott Cooper
Written by: Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth (screenplay), Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill (book)
Starring: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch and Dakota Johnson

Director Scott Cooper needs to free himself from the burden of story.  All of his movies, from Crazy Heart to last year’s Out of the Furnace to his latest, Black Mass, are set in very specific, interesting milieus and held down by their scripts’ insistence on plowing through plot points.  This is a bigger problem in Black Mass, the story of notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp) and his fraught alliance with the FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), because the story Cooper is telling is so vast that the movie is reduced to a series of brutal murders.

Adapted by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth from Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill’s 2001 book of the same name, Black Mass punishes Connolly while mythologizing Bulger.  This is partially because of the built-in audience history with Depp, whose very presence makes Bulger into a movie star.  Cooper doesn’t know how to play with this idea like Michael Mann did with Depp in his 2009 John Dillinger film Public Enemies.

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REVIEW: Grandma

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Grandma Lily Tomlin

Grandma
Directed by: Paul Weitz
Written by: Paul Weitz
Starring: Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, Marcia Gay Harden and Sam Elliot

Grandma is a robust, compact vehicle for the boundless talent of Lily Tomlin.  She is so effortlessly funny and at times disarmingly sad here that it makes its faults easier to stomach.  The movie is set up as a series of vignettes involving Elle Reid (Tomlin) and her granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) trying to raise $630 so Sage can have an abortion without telling her judgmental, ruthless mother (Marcia Gay Harden).  Though Grandma’s dialogue about abortion tends to be overly didactic, that it doesn’t punish, kill or judge Sage for wanting the procedure is admirable.

Elle doesn’t have the money on hand to give her granddaughter because she’s broke after paying off all her debt (and then cutting up her credit cards to make a wind chime), so she and Sage set out to raise the money.  First, they try the loser who got Sage pregnant (Nat Wolff), but he only has $50, and Elle has to hit him in the nuts with a hockey stick to get even that much out of him.  From there, the two go on a drive through Elle’s past in an effort to get the rest of the money before Sage’s appointment at 5:45 p.m. (They start off on their fundraising journey at about 9 a.m. that same day, when Sage shows up at her grandma’s house right after Elle had broken up with her girlfriend Olivia [Judy Greer]).

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Short takes: Straight Outta Compton, The Gift, Mission: Impossible 5 & more

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Straight Outta Compton

Straight Outta Compton – F. Gary Gray’s N.W.A. biopic is an occasionally thrilling chronicle of the rise of the West Coast hip hop group that sadly devolves into brand management.  That’s to be expected when the film’s producers, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, are also two of its subjects.  Straight Outta Compton is a wonderful showcase for its three core actors (Corey Hawkins as Dre, O’Shea Jackson Jr. as his father Ice Cube and especially Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E), but it could have been so much more.

Compton’s focus on police brutality is incredibly relevant, and the early scenes where the artists are subjected to violent, unwarranted stops by law enforcement are among its most powerful.  N.W.A.’s concert in Detroit, where they perform “Fuck tha Police” after being intimidated by officers before taking the stage, is filmed with undeniable urgency and energy, as is the follow-up where undercover officers charge the stage and arrest the group.

Like the other concert performance scenes, the energy of the crowd is contagious, and the movie’s biggest shortcoming is in its failure to address the female half of those excited crowds. N.W.A.’s misogyny is largely unconfronted, as is Dr. Dre’s abusive history with women.  This  has already been written about at length by people with more authority on the subject than me, but the watered down history of the movie’s second half is noticeable and hurts it.  Gray’s direction is beautiful and powerful in equal measure, and the sweeping images of ’80s and ’90s Compton — dirt bikes cruising down the street in the sunset, decked-out old cars bumping to music in the neon-colored streets, gangs uniting against police violence.  I can’t help but think there was more to tell here, though; that an unrestrained history, or even a 5-hour miniseries, would have done the story more justice.  Grade: C+

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REVIEW: Ricki and the Flash

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Ricki and the Flash 1

Ricki and the Flash
Directed by: Jonathan Demme
Written by: Diablo Cody
Starring: Meryl Streep, Mamie Gummer, Rick Springfield and Kevin Kline

Her name isn’t really Ricki Rendazzo.  Ricki Rendazzo is a rock star alter ego; her thick eye make-up, leather pants and gaudy jewelry are shields from life’s many and varied disappointments.  When Linda Brummel has to be Linda Brummel, like when she hands her ID to a security guard outside her ex-husband’s wealthy suburb,  she seems embarrassed and defeated, like she’s forced to break character.

To be Ricki, Linda had to give up a lot, including financial stability, her marriage and a relationship with her three children. She also has to grin and bear a job as a cashier at Total Food, a Whole Foods rip-off where people routinely spend as much on food as she makes in a week. Is all of this worth it?  Does playing nightly at a California dive bar to a small crowd that loves you really count?

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REVIEW: Tig

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Tig
Directed by: Kristina Goolsby & Ashley York
Written by: Jennifer Arnold

I love Tig Notaro.  I became a fan in March 2011, when I saw her perform as an opening act for Sarah Silverman at The FIllmore in Detroit.   She did an extended bit about the Spanish phrase “no moleste,” and sold t-shirts in the lobby that said that after the show.  More keenly than her act, though, I remember how she wound through the audience during the Q&A period with Silverman that ended the night.  Even then, her distinct deadpan did not relent, and the way she said “Yeah, I have another question,” before she allowed the audience member to speak, as if she were disdainful of the entire concept, made me laugh almost as much as her set.

Just over a year later, Notaro’s comedy exploded back into my life.  I saw Louis C.K. tweet out that she had performed one of the handful of masterful routines he’d seen in his life at the Largo in Los Angeles; I remembered her name and sought it out.  There were articles and ecstatic reviews, but no video (the Largo doesn’t allow photos or video).  Thankfully, audio of the set was recorded and C.K. eventually made it available to buy on his website.

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Short takes: Southpaw, Saint Laurent, Inside Out & more

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Southpaw

Southpaw– Jake Gyllenhaal gives a tremendous performance in Southpaw, but just like his turn in last year’s Nightcrawler it’s buried in a bland movie.  The grand scale and energy of Antoine Fuqua’s direction and Gyllenhaal’s ferocious intensity in the role of boxer Bobby Hope are almost enough to carry the movie past a mountain of cliches and a predictable story.  The script, by Kurt Sutter, is driven by big emotions rather than narrative logic.  It starts out with Hope in the prime of his career: he’s undefeated, has millions of dollars and a loving family.  He loses it all when his wife (Rachel McAdams) is gunned down during a brawl he’s involved in at a charity event.

Sadly, the movie can’t recover from her absence any more than Hope can.  After her death his entire fortune seems to evaporate, and he’s rushed back into the ring by a manager (Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent) who only wants more money.  Hope snaps during that rebound match, is suspended from fighting and ultimately loses custody of his daughter.  He eventually stumbles into the small, antique gym of Tick Willis (a fantastic Forest Whitaker), who just so happens to be a world-class trainer.  By the end, he’s landed back into the ring with the same man he was fighting when his wife died.  If you’re wondering how this all escalated so quickly, you’re not alone.  Southpaw is too focused on plowing through plot points to the Big Finish that it never fully connects. Grade: C-

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REVIEW: Trainwreck

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trainwreck

Trianwreck
Directed by: Judd Apatow
Written by: Amy Schumer
Starring: Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larson and Tilda Swinton

When Amy Schumer wants you to laugh, she widens her eyes, puts her hand on her chest and looks around the room, her expression saying “What?  Was it something I said?”  Her punchlines are moments of intentional ignorance, her self-proclaimed “dumb white girl” persona. She is a ruthless interrogator of body image and her own sex life, finding humor in the ways they both clash with the relentless standards of Vogue and Cosmopolitan.  Her material on race, on the other hand, can come off as unintentionally ignorant and cruel.  That’s why I was grateful for her Comedy Central show Inside Amy Schumer, because while she is often a very funny teller, her comedic persona lends itself much better to showing.

With Trainwreck, which Schumer wrote and stars in, that persona is evolved into something fully, often uncomfortably human.  Her character, Amy Townsend, is a writer for a straight dude lifestyle magazine, not unlike Lena Dunham’s short-lived gig at GQ in the third season of her HBO show Girls.  Both the show and the movie have a hilariously warped view of the office culture at these publications, though Girls is decidedly nicer and focuses more on Dunham’s character’s inability to thrive in such an environment.  Amy does thrive in this knowingly stupid world, where articles like “You’re not gay, she’s just boring,” are routine pitches in an afternoon meeting.

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REVIEW: Amy

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Amy Winehouse 2

Amy
Directed by: Asif Kapadia

In Amy, the tumultuous life and untimely death of the singer Amy Winehouse is chronicled in an onslaught of images both high and low-res.  Though she was an old soul, early in life she descended into a fatal addiction to drugs and alcohol, all during the rise of the smartphone. Director Asif Kapadia uses the plethora of video and still images of Winehouse’s decline to show a woman surrounded by sharks.

Many of those sharks– the paparazzi, her boyfriend-turned-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, a camera crew hired by her father Mitch Winehouse– are the ones recording the footage Kapadia uses, which makes watching the end product a kind of double-edged sword.  Would such an intimate, affecting portrait be possible without these monsters?  A particularly disturbing passage comes when Winehouse goes to rehab with Fielder, something that a doctor interviewed for the documentary says never should have happened. Fielder films her as a friend does her hair, asking her to sing an updated version of her hit single “Rehab.”  He wants to hear her say “Yes, yes, yes,” to admit defeat in front of the camera and reverse the defiant “No, no no” of the song’s chorus.

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REVIEW: Magic Mike XXL

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Magic Mike XXL

Magic Mike XXL
Directed by: Gregory Jacobs
Written by: Reid Carolin
Starring: Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer and Jada Pinkett Smith

Yes, of course the extra, extra large sequel to Magic Mike is overflowing with washboard abs, man-thongs and sexy, sticky dance numbers.  It contains scenes of near orgiastic excess featuring Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer and many others,  but XXL is also more about audience participation than its predecessor.  It’s the pleasure in the (on-screen) crowds- their wide grins, frantic eyes and nervous laughter- that is a big part of what makes the movie such a contagious, refreshing burst of joy.

Much of XXL focuses on Mike (Channing Tatum, as effortlessly charismatic as ever) taking a spontaneous vacation from his now-successful furniture design business to road (s)trip to a male stripper convention in Myrtle Beach with some of the key players from the first movie.  Taking the club away from them provides the movie with an electrifying freedom.   Almost everything that ties them to that movie’s world- cell phones, old costumes, conflict – is thrown out the window here, often literally.

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REVIEW: Jurassic World

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Jurassic World 3

Jurassic World
Directed by: Colin Trevorrow
Written by: Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly (screenplay), Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (story), Michael Crichton (characters)
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D’Onofrio and Ty Simpkins

In the latest Jurassic film installment, not only are these fools still cloning dinosaurs and then subsequently shooting at and running terrified from them, but they are doing it all on the ruins of the place where the same damn thing happened in 1993.  Jurassic World’s meta cynicism is almost as unrelenting as the violently earnest, flat characters; sometimes the clash between the two is entertaining, and other times it’s annoying.  The dino-revival turned slaughterhouse from the first film is now a happy-go-lucky theme park, tacked-on corporate sponsorships and hordes of vacationing families included.  It’s a shinier gloss to distract from the fact that these creatures are still more than capable of getting loose and eating everyone.

Director Colin Trevorrow has made a summer spectacle that seems mad about being one.  The most memorable shot in the movie is not of velociraptors doing battle with a ferocious new hybrid dinosaur but of one of a T-Rex being obstructed by smartphones.  These people are just here to get their photos, and the grinning corporate suits working behind the scenes are making bigger and more dangerous spectacles for them to Instagram.

Jurassic World 2

At first, Jurassic World is an amusing critique of corporate culture (with built in product placement, of course).  It descends into predictable madness when a big carnivorous dinosaur escapes, but what caught me off guard was just how sadistic Trevorrow’s movie actually becomes.  Obviously, the two wide-eyed young brothers who we follow from the beginning will be fine.  Chris Pratt, the movie’s overly stoic moral compass, will be fine.  Bryce Dallas Howard, who if she was allowed to take off her ridiculously high heels in the middle of the jungle might actually have been able to save everyone, will be fine.

The movie seems to go out of its way to show everyone else suffer, though.  There’s an extended sequence where the brothers’ babysitter gets picked up by a flying creature, dropped in a pool and then eaten by a gigantic sea monster.  In this same scene we see a brief shot of a tiny triceratops plucked away from a shrieking child by the airborne reptiles.  It’s off-putting and mean-spirited, and the sanitized PG-13 rating only accentuates that.

Trevorrow is not as good at sick, sinister entertainments as David Fincher, so Jurassic World feels more like an angry mash-up of blockbuster movie elements than an actual movie. Its unending sly winks at itself are amusing at first and then eye-roll inducing, and it’s hard to sympathize with terrified people running from dinosaurs when it doesn’t make you like any of them beforehand.  The velociraptors have a more sympathetic and endearing character arc than anything else in the movie, which made me wish the franchise had just done away with humans altogether for this installment.  Rise of the Planet of the Raptors, please.

Grade: C-