Basmati Blues: A Review (Review#1931)

BASMATI BLUES

I know, for good or ill, many people dislike Brie Larson. They do not see a competent, even Oscar winning actress. They see a smug scold or insincere elitist. I cannot muster any hatred towards Larson, however, even in something as fluffy and inconsequential as Basmati Blues. One thinks that its heart is in the right place. Its execution, however, leaves much to be desired. 

American scientist Linda Watt (Brie Larson), along with her father Eric (Scott Bakula) has created Rice Nine, a genetically modified rice that is resistant to pests and drought. The Mogil Corporation needs a representative to sell Rice Nine to the Indian market. The Mogil mogul Mr. Gurgon (Donald Sutherland) decides that perky, naive Linda is the perfect saleslady.

It is off to India, where Linda finds herself in conflict with struggling and poor student Rajit (Utkarsh Ambudkar) who is also well versed in rice production. She does have help from William (Saahil Sehgal), a young Agricultural Ministry official who wants to also get Rice Nine into the Indian market. Linda does her best to blend with the Indian community, but she still stumbles through things. An unofficial competition between Linda and Rajit to win the hearts, minds and contracts of their competing rice and stink weed to see which is better.

Linda now has to fight her attractions to both William and Rajit. The former is wealthy and lured by Gurgon and his aide Evelyn (Tyne Daly) to push for Rice Nine even if the contracts would tie farmers to buy the rice every year and hand their land over to Mogil. Will Linda, who eventually learns of the deception, rise to save the day? Whom will she choose as her love interest?

I figure that the second question is easy to answer since this is a movie where the expression "opposites attract" seems to describe its romance. I found a bit of a shame given that I thought William was a better fit for Linda than Rajit. Put aside how I think Sehgal is better-looking than Ambudkar. William was from an equivalent socioeconomic background, did have a change of heart at the end where he helped thwart Mogil's evil schemes and was more apt to listen to Linda than Rajit, who starts out with contempt for her.

I found Basmati Blues had its heart in the right place. It just did not have good execution. I was surprised to learn that Basmati Blues was an attempt at a Bollywood type musical. Having seen Bollywood and Tollywood musicals, Basmati Blues was nowhere near as big and enthusiastic as the Indian films that I have come across. It is more like a standard Western musical, where characters attempt to express emotions through song.

Not that the songs were particularly good or memorable. The opening song, All Signs Point to Yes, almost startles the viewer because there is nothing to indicate that Basmati Blues is a musical. If one does remember the musical numbers, it is for the wrong reasons. Linda, Rajit and William have an odd love trio in Love Don't Knock at My Door where each of them sings about their conflicting emotions. I found it a bit strange.

Perhaps the oddest moment is when Donald Sutherland himself breaks out into a song-and-dance with The Greater Good, where he and Daly seduce William into seeing things their way. I do not think that even Donald Sutherland thought he was ever going to be King of Broadway Showtunes. He mostly talks on pitch, which makes his number with experienced singer Tyne Daly all the odder. To be fair, The Greater Good is deliberately over-the-top and cartoonish, so we can cut it some slack.

If the songs in this musical are not awful but not great, what about the acting? Well, it is serviceable. Larson is pleasant enough as the mostly cheerful and focused Linda. Ambudkar is appropriately flustered and irritated as Rajit, who knows that he is right but cannot prove it. Sehgal is equally appropriate at William, who is supposed to be a bad guy but is actually quite pleasant. 

As a side note, exactly why this Indian man has this very English name Basmati Blues never bothers to ask. 

Both Daly and Bakula are on screen so briefly that they seem almost wasted. Daly acts as if she is fully aware that Basmati Blues is meant to be silly, so she does not bother to try to be anything other than a broad villain. How can one sum up seeing Tyne Daly and Donald Sutherland break out into their own reworked version of This Train (is Bound for Glory) as they attempt to ride off with their massive sacks of Rice Nine? 

Basmati Blues does try to be amusing, if not clever or original. I cannot find it in my heart to truly hate on it. The film is not the worst thing that I have seen. I found it well-meaning but not good. 

DECISION: D+

The Mummy (2017): A Review

 

THE MUMMY (2017)

In the annals of contemporary Hollywood, there are few actors whose name alone can open a film. Maybe Tom Hanks. Maybe Denzel Washington. One name, though, towers above them despite his short stature. Few names still have cache with the public in terms of sheer stardom more than Tom Cruise. Cruise is also one of the shrewdest actors around, aware of both his image and what makes a hit film. Therefore, one looks upon The Mummy, the first of a planned cinematic universe, with puzzlement on how Tom Cruise and everyone involved in The Mummy failed so spectacularly with this film on every level imaginable. 

Long ago, a group of Crusaders bury a knight with a special ruby. This jewel was from the Nile, or rather ancient Egypt. It was part of a dagger used against Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who was set to ascend the Pharoah's throne until a male half-brother was born. She kills her father, the baby mama and the infant, then was about to slice a lover to allow the god Set to take human form when she herself is killed.

Moving on to present-day London and Iraq, you have two sections that eventually blend. The Crusader tomb is found while building a new part of the London Underground. This section is taken over by mysterious figure Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe). In Iraq, renegade Sergeant Nick Morton (Cruise) and his little buddy Corporal Vail (Jake Johnson) are out treasure hunting versus fighting Iraqi insurgents. Fortunately for them, they do bumble their way into an unknown and elaborate Egyptian tomb.

Unfortunately for them, it is that of Ahmanet. British archeologist and Nick's fling Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) is more intrigued with the tomb than with whatever treasures may be found. Nick and Vail care only for gold but know enough to get out of a dangerous tomb. Vail is bitten by a spider that causes him to fall under Ahmanet's power. He goes on a killing spree and is sadly killed off by Nick.

Is this the end of Vail? Far from it, for he now warns Nick of Ahmanet's power. Ahmanet wants to use Nick to bring Set back and enact her plans for world dominations. Dr. Jekyll and his alter ego now must stop her. The lives and afterlives of everyone are in danger, and it will take Nick becoming a hero to save the world.

The Mummy was intended to kick off a whole new franchise dubbed the Dark Universe, a pun on the Universal Studio name as well as a cinematic universe. The idea was to bring back the classic Universal Studios monsters (the Mummy, the Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde) into a series of connected films for a long-running film series. The Mummy could not have been a more disastrous launch for such an enterprise. It is to where I jokingly wonder if screenwriters David Koepp, Dylan Kussman and Christopher McQuarrie along with director Alex Kurtzman were paid off by rival studios to deliberately sabotage the Dark Universe. 

The Mummy never took the time to genuinely set things up. Part of the problem is that The Mummy has essentially two starts. We start with the Crusader burial in 1127 England, then we get Crowe's voiceover telling us of Ahmanet. You know that these stories are eventually going to meld, but it does seem rather convoluted to have so much stuffed before the opening credits. Add to that the rather distasteful part of having Ahmanet kill an infant, and you are playing with fire. 

The Mummy is spreading itself too thin with its set up, but then despite its almost two-hour runtime seems desperate to rush though things. So much time is spent on an action sequence in Mesopotamia (which the film helpfully reminds the audience is now Iraq) that people who walked in late might have thought they had walked into the newest Mission: Impossible film by mistake. We never get a proper introduction to Nick, or Vail, or Jenny. Having already barely gotten a vague introduction to Ahmanet and not getting much if any introduction for Crowe or his Dr. Jekyll (here almost always called "Henry"), audiences can't latch on to who these characters are.

That is not counting a truly baffling moment when Crowe tells Nick the story that we already know about Ahmanet. I get that this is Jekyll explaining to Nick who this is and what preceded his involvement, but why have the audience sit through it again? Why not just save the flashback to this moment? 

I think The Mummy was too obsessed with being wall-to-wall action to bother trying to make the characters interesting. The film certainly gave what it thought were exciting action sequences, such as a crashing airplane. However, that led to more questions than answers. Jenny tells the soldiers taking Ahmanet's sarcophagus back to Britain not to shoot Vail because the plane is pressurized, but shortly afterwards Nick shoots Vail three times. The plane does crash, but the debris seems to be spread over an excessively wide area. If The Mummy is to be believed, the various corpses, including a still remarkably fit then-55-year-old Cruise, could be recovered but the sarcophagus is still being sought at the crash site. 

The film desperately tries to be exciting, with constant action sequences and Brian Tyler's bombastic score pounding out the menace and danger of it all. Neither helped: the action sequences were shockingly boring and lifeless, the music overblown and almost incessant. 

The Mummy also seems unaware of what it actually wants to be. Whenever Jake Johnson appears, it almost seems to want to be a comedy. His postmortem scenes look like a rip-off of An American Werewolf in London. Vail, for reasons I'm not sure anyone can explain, prattles on to Nick about how he repeated shot Vail. He's a corpse that only Nick can see, so that would make him a ghost. However, I think he is also a literal corpse. I say this because at the end, Vail is fully human, Nick using his powers to bring him back to life (and setting him up for future Dark Universe films). I figure Vail was going to be the comic relief in this hoped-for franchise, but it did not pan out.

As a side note, Jake Johnson, who did the best he could with what he was given, may have the rare distinction of being one of the few people who manages to look shorter than Tom Cruise on screen.

I think Cruise went into The Mummy with high hopes of creating another franchise. He took a stab at comedy with Nick, who was meant to be a quippy type of fellow. In his first scene, he rebukes Vail for suggesting that he is a grave robber. He tells Vail that they are "liberators of precious antiquities". Nick did not come across as a daring man of action with a way with women and weapons. He came across as an idiot. It does not help when it looks like at one point that Tom Cruise is close to getting raped by a corpse. 

Wallis' Jenny was so blank that she is hardly worth mentioning. To be fair, Jenny was a poorly written character: she was not particularly smart, not interesting and wavered between being a potential love interest and being irritated by Nick. Crowe thought that underplaying Henry (again, the use of Jekyll is curious), he could make Jekyll come across as mysterious. It had the opposite effect of making us not take any of this seriously, but not in a good way.

There is nothing in The Mummy that is good. It is not fun. It is not scary. It is not interesting. It is just there. 

If The Mummy was created to be the first of many monster films, it failed in spades. The Dark Universe franchise died with The Mummy. Perhaps it is fitting that this living corpse of a film killed off yet another film series that I think few people wanted. 

DECISION: F

The Mummy Retrospective: An Introduction

The Mummy (1932)

The Mummy (1959)

The Mummy (1999)

The Mummy Retrospective: The Conclusions

The Final Year: A Review (Review #1715)

 

THE FINAL YEAR

There is something to be said about looking back. You can see how far you have come and how far you have yet to go. The Final Year covers the last full year of former President Barack Obama's term, specifically his foreign policy team. Less informative and more infomercial, The Final Year almost makes one delight in how the figures failed in their public roles.

The Final Year focuses on Secretary of State John Kerry, UN Ambassador Samantha Power and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes with occasional visits from National Security Advisor Susan Rice and former President Obama. With the Obama Administration clocking down, there is still so much to do. The team needs to bring peace to the Middle East, end climate change, visit foreign countries and continue to look on worshipfully upon President Obama. 

The Final Year became best known for inspiring a meme. Ben Rhodes, looking genuinely shell-shocked, can only look on in befuddlement and almost despair when the 2016 election results deliver a Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton, victory. The Final Year, however, I think offers not so much an insider's view of the workings of the Obama White House so much as a reason why Mrs. Clinton lost.

So much of The Final Year comes across as controlled and manipulated. I am sure that director Greg Barker would insist that everything was spontaneous. From what I saw and remember, however, almost all the conversations and meetings sound like calculated speech versus actual conversations. It sounds almost scripted, as if the participants knew they were "being recorded for posterity". As such, a certain artifice soon comes into play. 

Some moments are cringe-inducing. To be fair, some of them are not the subjects' fault. In a May 2016 conference, Secretary Kerry meets what appears to be a Mozart cosplayer with whom he takes a selfie with. Other times, though, the actions and behavior of the foreign policy team comes across as curious. 

At one point, Rhodes is seen struggling to get into a vehicle with his backpack giving him difficulty in entering. Apparently, this high-ranking official with a major role in foreign affairs finds it difficult to manage his own bag, let alone think of taking it off before getting into his vehicle. He is clearly embarrassing himself in his klutziness. 

Rhodes has another oddball moment when he appears overcome with emotion when in Cuba. One is left puzzled why the faltering efforts at dethawing the last outpost of the Cold War would make him almost weepy. He seems disinterested in the long Castro record of human rights abuses, but being their man in Havana is something to make the viewer marvel at their realpolitik acumen.

Curiously, Rhodes is at the heart of a lot of curious The Final Year moments. He reports how his Muslim hijab-wearing assistant has been crying for days after the election. However, I do not remember hearing from her directly in an interview. A good opportunity was lost but given that The Final Year was about their laundry list of accomplishments, one couldn't stop to hear why she was more fearful of Donald Trump than of Boko Haram.

Seeing Ambassador Powers talk to victims of Boko Haram is one of the few human moments in The Final Year. It is a tough watch to see and hear their harrowing stories is a reminder of the tragedy others endure. Coming shortly after Secretary of State Kerry declared that climate change is a bigger threat than ISIS (also known as ISIL) is a bit strange. 

It is not as strange as suggesting that a New York Times Magazine profile of Rhodes is some sort of scandal because he said that the press literally knew nothing. 

As a side note, inadvertently or not, Ben Rhodes comes across as a bumbling idiot. 

A lot of The Final Year seems more like a promotional video for the Obama Administration than a chronicle of current crises. It does end on a good note, with the President touring the Acropolis and musing that visiting ancient sites gives him perspective about the present-day conditions. 

For anyone interested in the inner workings of the White House, I think they might get a better idea of what goes on by watching The West Wing than in The Final Year. 

DECISION: C-

Beauty and the Beast (2017): A Review

 

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (2017)

I imagine that the people behind the remake of the animated film version of Beauty and the Beast really did, in their heart of hearts, have the best of intentions. Yes, the Disney Corporation has been raiding their fabled Disney Vault and remaking their animated catalog into live-action versions because, reasons. There has been something predatory about how Disney remakes old films, many already established and beloved classics, and throws them at audiences willing to watch the same thing because people are in them. While Beauty and the Beast is at times pretty to look at, there is a hollowness, a sadness to it all. 

In Ancient Regime France, an enchantress has cursed a vain prince and his servants to be a beast and inanimate objects respectively. Many years later, a bookish girl named Belle (Emma Watson) yearns for a life far from the provincial world she lives in. She also longs to stay far but very far away from self-proclaimed hunk Gaston (Luke Evans). Gaston has got it into his thick head that Belle is the ideal wife, even if he is oblivious to the googly eyes of his faithful Sancho Panza, LeFou (Josh Gad).

Belle's father Maurice (Kevin Kline) goes on business but ends up at the now-forgotten Beast's palace. He eventually flees after seeing a talking teacup, but when attempting to take a rose for Belle, he is captured by the Beast (Dan Stevens). Belle, alarmed by Maurice's horse arriving alone, goes and takes her father's place. Maurice cannot get anyone to believe his wild story, though Gaston sees it as a way to get Maurice to agree to a marriage.

As Belle and the Beast attempt to negotiate their lives, both begin to soften towards the other. The palace servants, such as the uptight clock Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), the suave candelabra Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), the kindly teapot Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson) and wardrobe Madame de Garderobe (Audra McDonald) all conspire to help the blossoming romance. Granted, they have ulterior motives: only when the Beast can love and be loved in return can the spell be broken. However, it is now a race to create this magic moment, for the Beast has until when the last rose petal the enchantress gave the Beast falls. Will Belle and the Beast see something that was not there before? Will Gaston get his way?

We've had live-action remakes of Cinderella, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, Pete's Dragon, Dumbo, this one, The Lion King, Aladdin, Pinocchio and the upcoming The Little Mermaid and Snow White. That is also not counting such films as Maleficent and its sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil plus Cruella, which are not strictly remakes but revolve around Disney villains. Still no word on whom they will cast as Basil of Baker Street for the inevitable The Great Mouse Detective live-action remake. 

Most of the Disney live-action remakes (which have grown so plentiful they might as well be their own genre) follow a surprisingly similar route: stay very close to the original and only tweaking bits here and there. Beauty and the Beast follows this familiar route, but with continuing diminishing returns. The film aims to be distinct but in copying so much from the animated version, it is simply impossible. However, if it wants to be an almost shot-for-shot remake, why then bother? 

Beauty and the Beast has what I call "forced frivolity", where we are told how happy everything is but it does come through on the screen. Instead, we get some scenes that are almost sad to watch. A good example is the Be Our Guest number. It was here that I first recognized Ewan McGregor's voice, and while he is capable of singing, there was no true joie de vivre coming from the number. Instead, if felt sluggish, almost creepy.

I think it comes from the fact that screenwriters Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos were given very little leeway to find something new and original. They had to have the servants be objects just like in the animated version. However, the end results fail spectacularly. The clock and candelabra look off-putting and unnatural. Worse was Mrs. Potts, who looked like a face had literally been drawn onto a teapot. There was no warmth or sweetness communicated from the objects, because they were limited to being "real".

The few things the writers did change from the 1991 version were nonsensical and pointless. We got a Mr. Potts, who thanks to the spell forgot he had a wife and child. The enchantress essentially swept in after the last petal fell to bring the beauty behind the Beast to life. Even the "LeFou is gay!" bit was vague. For most of the film, LeFou was more fey than gay, with only the mildest hint at the end when a man cuts in to dance with him.

While Beauty and the Beast kept to most of the 1991 songs, the three new songs by Alan Menkin and Tim Rice are bland and forgettable. Two of them center around the Beast, with Evermore being a ballad sung by the Beast. The other Beast-centric number, Days in the Sun, appears to want to soften the Beast's character and make him sympathetic due to an unhappy childhood, a strange decision given he is meant to soften over time. I also got the sense that new lyrics were added to the songs, but if so I don't think it was an improvement.

For example, Gaston seems to be longer and with a strange section where LeFou cannot spell out "Gaston" because as he sing-talks, he is illiterate. I cannot remember for certain if that was part of the 1991 version, but I don't think it added anything either.

As if that was already not bad enough, the cast seems wildly out-of-place. Emma Watson looks more angry and hard as Belle, never displaying anything close to warmth. Moreover, her singing voice is frankly awful and harsh. Stevens too was not very good when singing, and not much better when in Beast mode. 

McGregor and McKellen seem ill-suited for the Lumiere/Cogsworth double-act. They seem almost complete strangers in the film, making the idea of longtime association laughable. I thought that Cogsworth looked like Tik Tok from Return to Oz, but having seen Tik Tok, he looks worse. Emma Thompson, I think, did her best as Mrs. Potts, but couldn't quite get the sweet and motherly nature there.

Kevin Kline did do well as Maurice, a mix of eccentric and caring coming through. Luke Evans was hamming it up to the Nth degree as Gaston, and his voice was much stronger than Watson or just about anyone else save Audra McDonald. He went all-in on the himbo Gaston, so I give him credit for that.

Beauty and the Beast has some pretty-looking moments and nice costumes, but so much of it is uninteresting I genuinely wonder why anyone would prefer it over the original. To my mind, Beauty and the Beast was like seeing someone propping up a corpse. 

DECISION: D-

Breathe: A Review

BREATHE

Any actor with a modicum of artistic (and Academy Award) aspirations will invariably be drawn to 'inspirational' biopics. If the character has a disability, all the better. Gives one a chance to show his range by showing his limitations, or rather showing how skilled he is by not using his whole body.

Eddie Redmayne is the worst of this lot for he was actually rewarded for his monstrous performance in and campaigning for The Theory of Everything. However, his shameless Oscar-bait and more brazen Oscar campaigning inspired many an actor to give 'Redmayning' a go in his efforts at Oscar immortality. A case can be made that Matthew McConaughey did succeed in Redmayning his way to an Oscar via Dallas Buyers Club. For the most part though, the streets are littered with failed efforts to build on Redmayne's Machiavellian cinematic career.

Then again, we're still waiting to see if Tom Holland will also try a little Redmayning by eventually playing Louis Braille in something with a faux-inspiring title like The Sight of Touch or something equally awful.

Jake Gyllenhaal tried to Redmayne his way to an Oscar via Stronger. Benedict Cumberbatch tried to Redmayne his way to an Oscar via The Imitation Game. Granted, homosexuality is not a disability but the film played up Alan Turing's potential Asperger's as said disability.

Scattered among the dashed hopes for lofty praise and statuettes is Andrew Garfield in Breathe.

All three failed to win Oscars for their films, with only Cumberbatch managing a nomination, but bless them for trying.

As a side note, it's interesting that these 'respected thespians' are now working in franchises post-Oscar glory, with only Redmayne himself not shilling in comic-book films, but I digress.

Breathe plays like a parody of these 'inspiration' biopics, parody made worse by the fact that everyone involved is so totally sincere.

Robin Cavendish (Garfield) and Diana (Claire Foy) quickly fall in love, marry, and move to Kenya where Diana finds she's pregnant. Robin, however, contracts polio, nearly dies and is condemned to a few months of immobility before death.

Diana will not accept this diagnosis nor Robin having to live out what little life he has in a hospital. Insisting on taking him to their new home and son Jonathan, they build as idyllic a life as possible. Robin also pushes his friend Teddy Hall (Hugh Bonneville) to build a chair that will give the ventilator-bound Robin something akin to mobility. With his portable breathing machine, Robin now lives his life working to bring his device to those forced into iron lungs until his years of ventilator use has corroded his lungs to where he may end up drowning in his own blood.

With that, he decides that his time is up, throws a farewell party and elects to die, Diana and the teen Jonathan at his side.

For a film titled Breathe, the whole thing is surprisingly airless, drowning in its good and noble intentions. Jonathan Cavendish produced Breathe, and one can have a great deal of fun speculating exactly whether Breathe was a tribute to his parents or a way to work out any psychological issues he had about them.

The Robin and Diana in Breathe are simply not human. There is never a sense of conflict or sometimes emotions apart from 'joy' and 'triumph'. It takes an hour for Diana to show even a slight sliver of anger or fear about Robin's condition, but for the rest of Breathe she is the doggedly cheerful, loyal wife, forever standing by her man.

As a side note, the Oscar campaign for Breathe slotted Foy for Supporting Actress consideration. How could anyone think hers was a supporting role given she was clearly a co-lead and was probably on screen for the same time or slightly longer than 'Lead Actor' Garfield? Her character was supportive to an almost saintly manner, but Foy was clearly a Leading Actress.

Foy's performance really gave Diana nothing of substance apart from looking on adoringly and with nary a complaint at Garfield, though I confess laughing out loud when she was given the grim news of Robin's polio. Her face was hilarious, expressing more irritation than devastation.

I also laughed heartily at Garfield's performance. It consisted mostly of grins, but at one point where the film wants us to be terrified that his life was in danger, Garfield's face and clicking elicited howls of laughter from me. I kept telling myself 'I shouldn't laugh! I shouldn't laugh!', and I was certainly not laughing at a disabled man's potential death but in how Breathe portrayed it. Garfield had no real emotion in Breathe, nothing to make Robin a genuine person or even personality.

He, Foy and everyone on screen really was so blank in Breathe, forever suggesting these were people but never coming across as people. It's a poor sign when Diana Rigg in a cameo showed more of a character than the leads. You had the prissy and racist lead doctor Entwhistle (Jonathan Hyde) forever complaining, stomping about and saying how "You'll be DEAD in six weeks!" Entwhistle's racism was directed at the Indian Dr. Khan (Amit Shah), as close to comic relief as Breathe gets with his slightly befuddled doctor.

In short, Breathe had character types, but not flesh-and-blood characters.

William Nicholson's screenplay was simultaneously slavishly worshipful and accidentally hilarious, and perhaps that is where Breathe's greatest issue lays (though it has other problems). The film is simply far too worshipful towards its subjects. Robin and Diana have no flaws, and the film romanticizes them to the point where one almost wants to mock them.

When the Cavendishes go to Spain, I actually was hoping the stranger giving Diana's brother Bloggs (Tom Hollander) a ride to get a to a phone would end up murdering him.

I was also hoping General Franco would pop up too. Certainly would have livened up the film. That the film ends up having a fiesta amid all this makes it look faker even if perhaps this actually happened and wasn't artistic license.

Nicholson's script was also shockingly cliched. When we see the toddler Jonathan playing with his dog near Robin's bed, who here didn't expect said puppy to literally pull the plug? When, while driving in Spain, Diana asks Bloggs to plug in the ventilator, who here didn't expect said ventilator to blow a fuse? Not only does it not come as a surprise that these things happen, the film all but screams that we should wait for said things to happen.

Breathe has other odd choices. While Nitin Sawhney's score is at times appropriately lush, other times it seems wildly out of step with the scene. For example, when Bloggs has to get to the phone after accidentally blowing Robin's fuse, the music seems curiously cute and light for what should be a very serious moment. It's almost comedy music. That Lee Marvin's version of Wand'rin Star plays when Robin rides for the first time in the front seat or Robin twice enters a large gathering to Verdi's Triumphal March from Aida playing only punctuates the oddness of it all.

Andy Serkis in his directorial debut I think really wanted to make an inspirational and lush film. He got the latter part right but the former was floundering. The subject alone is not enough to make the film inspirational or moving. It should be a fascinating topic, but Breathe was so hung up on making Robin and Diana Cavendish this oh-so-perfect and loyal and 'courageous' couple that they and their circle end up rather dull and distant.

Breathe is a film more interested in being pretty than in being good. To its credit it is very pretty looking, as are Garfield and Foy. If the film had ended with the creation of the basic rudimentary portable breathing machine and spent more time introducing Robin and Diana, then we might have had a film.

Instead, what Breathe ended up as was either a case for canonization of Mr. and Mrs. Cavendish or worse, a spoof of so many 'inspirational' biopics. Either way, it's a poor way to chronicle this story.

1930-1994

DECISION: F

Wait For Your Laugh: A Review

WAIT FOR YOUR LAUGH

I was never a fan of Rose Marie, the subject of Wait For Your Laugh. In particular, I had a dislike for the hair-bow she always wore, which got on my nerves. Wait For Your Laugh at least puts that hair-bow in context, and it also chronicles a remarkable life on and off the stage. With interviews from her colleagues and family along with the subject herself, Wait For Your Laugh is an interesting piece recalling history both public and personal.

Rose Marie began her career early at age four as "Baby Rose Marie", the little girl who sang like Sophie Tucker (a popular singer in the early Twentieth Century known for a powerful voice and somewhat risque numbers). "Baby Rose Marie" was essentially discovered by Evelyn Nesbit, a chorus girl who parlayed her fame from a sex/murder scandal (earning her the nickname 'The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing') who invited the brassy toddler to join her in an impromptu duet.

Rose Marie explains that when she was a child, nightclubs were more 'family-friendly' with a variety show-type selection of dancers, comic, acrobats and singers versus just dancing in today's version. Soon, "Baby Rose Marie" was taking America by storm, with a hit radio show and appearing in short-reel films, the latter according to Rose Marie to prove that she was indeed a child and not a female midget.

Her father Frank "Happy Hank" Curley was intimate with mobsters. Rose Marie recalls when she was introduced to Al Capone, who was not just a fan but also had her do an unofficial show for his associates. She also recalls that he asked her to call him "Uncle Al" and to ask him for anything. He also gave her a ring, which she proudly kept.

Then as she matured, she kept her stage name save for the 'Baby' part, performing in nightclubs as a singer. Slowly she shifted into doing comedy as well out of necessity to fill time between numbers. She also met and married the love of her life, trumpeter Bobby Guy, despite the fierce objections of "Happy Hank", who tried to get his associates to rub him out.

It was only said associates fondness for 'their little girl' that saved Guy.

As her career continued, she found herself in curious situations. When asked to be the opening act at the newly-build Flamingo Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, she asked "What's Vegas?" She did it only for a chance to work with Jimmy Durante, and in a wild moment, recalls when she accidentally told the man delivering her pay that he was eleven dollars short.

As the man with the light blue eyes walked away, her dinner companion told her she'd just criticized Bugsy Siegel! Even more astonishing, a few minutes later Siegel came back to their table...with eleven dollars, apologizing for the mix-up!

Her naivete, at least when it came to non-mobsters, continued. Asked to be on a sitcom, she asked, "What's a Dick Van Dyke?" Her tenure on The Dick Van Dyke Show is chronicled, where we see that while she was certainly integral to the success of the show, she was displeased to see the younger, pretty Mary Tyler Moore lodge her from being the main female attraction.

We learn of her heartache at Buddy's death, and her black hair-bow as a tribute to him. As she goes into her senior years, we learn of her 'comeback' with the touring 4 Girls 4 set, enduring the diva-like horror of Margaret Whiting but loving her other 'girls' Helen O'Connor and especially Rosemary Clooney.

As she enters her ninth decade, she still yearns to be on stage, despite her weakening health, a major frustration for someone born to entertain.

Wait For Your Laugh certainly gives one a more complete portrait of a woman who was more than just Sally Rogers. Her tales of her 'mob connections' in particular are fascinating, especially given how almost nonchalant she is when talking about gangsters. It might be that her memories of people like Capone and Siegel are not of cold-blooded killers but of pretty nice guys who just happened to be cold-blooded killers.

Rose Marie was not blind to their acts, but she was also not afraid of them. Again part of that might be because she was a metaphorical daughter to so many of them, who were genuinely fond of our good Italian daughter. She was 'the kid', a nice girl who was pleasant, who was neither overtly sexual or asexual but 'one of the guys'.

She also was a living link to a time of vaudeville and variety shows who may not have ever been given the credit her long career merited. Her Sally Rogers became a 'type': the girl who was simultaneously independent yet not a 'threat' to the men or their wives, neither desirable or seeking to be desired. Despite that, Rose Marie's story has echoes of what has come after her heyday.

She recounts how after turning down an 'indecent proposal' from a film producer, her musical moments were cut entirely out of the film version of Top Banana, a stage show she costarred in.

Rose Marie died shortly after Wait For Your Laugh (the advise she gave Dick Van Dyke when working on his eponymous show to stop him from stepping on her lines), which the film notes.  As a chronicle of a long career with interesting people, Wait For Your Laugh is a treat. The film is a love letter: to Rose Marie herself, to a bygone era of show business and to Rose Marie's true love, her husband.

At least now I got a better understanding for that hair-bow which so annoyed me and wasn't just some oddball sartorial choice.

1923-2017

DECISION: B+

Bitter Harvest (2017): A Review (Review #1124)

BITTER HARVEST

Bitter Harvest covers the same territory, so to speak, that The North Star did. They are both set in Soviet-era Ukraine and involve the farming communities therein. Unlike The North Star's romanticized world of happy farmers forever singing among their bountiful crops, Bitter Harvest is closer to the truth of the brutal suppression of the State on those who dared oppose it. It might be a bit bogged down in the romance and be saddled with a clunky title, but Bitter Harvest is a much better film than expected.

Young Yuri (Max Irons) is a Ukrainian who is different from his father Yaroslav (Barry Pepper) and grandfather Ivan (Terence Stamp). Both of them are warriors, while Yuri is an artist who is generally not encouraged to be warlike. He has loved Natalka (Samantha Barks) since they were children and dreams of marrying her despite her illegitimate birth.

Life in their Ukrainian village is idyllic and peaceful, and even in the early days of the Russian Revolution there is some willingness to work with the Communists. Yuri and Natalka's friend Mykola (Aneurin Barnard) in particular is fond of 'The State' and of what Communism stands for. He also has a relative in Kiev that can get them all jobs, but Yuri wants to stay.

He also wants to marry Natalka, going so far as to have a one-night stand with her at a festival, the ardor of their passion unable to wait.

Then comes Stalin (Gary Oliver), who wants collectivism in Ukraine. The villagers are not hot for this idea, nor for the removal of their holy relics from their church. They want to hold on to their most sacred icon, the Icon of St. Yuri, something that new commissar Sergei (Tamer Hassan) wants. He wants their total subjugation.

By this time Yuri has finally gone to Kiev to study art, and he appears talented. He is encouraged by his teacher to follow more Surrealist and Cubist forms rather than his own more traditional manner. He even gets inspired by Mykola, who has risen to head the Ukrainian Communist Party.

Any hopes that Ukraine could keep its autonomy is quickly dissipated by the Russian Soviets, who now push hard on the people. The art must be Socialist Realism, much to Yuri's disdain. The concept of 'Ukraine' is similarly to be wiped out, causing mass arrests and Mykola's suicide. Worse is the collectivization, which forces Yuri's family and village to take arms.

It also leads to the Holodomor, the mass starvation/genocide of the Ukrainian people. The people suffer and Yuri finds himself not just imprisoned but tortured physically and psychologically. It's only by the thinnest of threads that he is not part of a series of mass executions but he manages to escape to return to Natalka.

Natalka, who is expecting, attempts to poison Sergei but fails. This leads to more oppression and a loss of their child. Yuri for his part now finds himself taking up his heritage of a warrior and is joined by Lubko (Jack Hollington), an orphan who serves both as physical guide and conscience.

Things culminate in a final battle with Sergei and the Russian troops. Yuri also reveals that the icon Natalka reluctantly traded for their family's release was a fake he had created, the real one safely hidden. He sees his mother and grandfather before both die in separate circumstances, and together with his now-wife Natalka and their 'son' Lubko, flee to the Polish border and we believe eventually to either Canada or the United States.

Bitter Harvest, I think, tries to follow in the footsteps of a Doctor Zhivago or Cold Mountain with its love story of the man attempting to return to his lady love during war.  The very title itself perhaps is a touch too poetic, as if attempting to emphasize the love story more than the horrors of this genocide.

The romanticism in Bitter Harvest may be its weakest point. I could not help think of The North Star in that the opening moments pre-Soviet occupation suffer from the same idyllic imagery that The North Star had. Director George Mendeluk bathes everything in a bright, soft light, all sunshine and happy folk dancing. Even the plunge into a lake of the young Yuri and Natalka has a very poetic visual nature that might be a touch much. Once we see the Soviets coming, the film becomes dark visually, all heavy clouds and night scenes.

It's something we've seen before, and while it conforms to the language of cinema, it may be gilding the lily just a touch.

In terms of performances, I think they did on the whole well. Irons is an up-and-comer, and he plays dreamy and lovelorn quite well, though at times the 'passion' between him and Natalka was veering close to exaggerated. He also can handle the action parts well without losing that dreamy aspect of Yuri. By that I mean he can do the action scenes, but you always sense that he was a reluctant warrior.

Barnard's part was smaller and perhaps underdeveloped, but I was highly impressed with him since I saw him in Citadel, and he does not disappoint in Bitter Harvest. You can see the disillusionment with Communism, even if like many subplots in the film, it comes and goes quickly.

Irons and Barnard impressed me to where they hopefully will have greater opportunities.

Barks was as good as her material, which like Barnard's part did not push her as an actress as much as it could have. Stamp and Pepper were underused as well but did have strong moments.

I'd say the biggest flaw in Bitter Harvest was the ending. Apart from using voiceover, it left one unclear whether the three of them made it across the Polish border. You also see the Icon of St. Yuri either left behind accidentally or on purpose, which again was not clear.

I found those minor flaws and was much more impressed with Bitter Harvest than I thought I would be. The Holodomor is an important story that needs to be much more known. I do not know if Bitter Harvest is the film to tell that story well, but it serves as a good primer.

DECISION: B+

Thor: Ragnarok. A Review (Review #1064)

THOR: RAGNAROK

I am not a Thor fan.  I wasn't crazy about Thor and I don't even remember Thor: The Dark World to where I wasn't sure I'd even seen it.  Apparently, I have. Out of all our characters in this longest and most expensive soap opera, Thor is the one I care about the least.

Now I come to the newest adventure with our Norse god. Thor: Ragnarok is a departure from his other adventures in that it lays the comedy thick on our more serious, almost humorless deity.  Contrary to any impression I may have left, I am not averse to humor in a comic book-based film.  It's only when it is so self-consciously aware that I get annoyed.

Thor: Ragnarok is fully aware of itself, and therein lies one of its major problems.

Our Norse himbo Thor (Chris Hemsworth) quickly defeats the demon Surtur, who has pledged to bring on the destruction of Asgard, or Ragnarok.  Thor has to throw in some quips and 'unaware' self-mockery before he finally manages to get back to Asgard.

That took some time because the new Keeper of the Gate, Skurge (Karl Urban) was too busy trying to impress some Asgardian hotties with some weapons he's fond of: machine guns he found on 'Midgard' (Earth), in a place called 'Texas'.  As such, he couldn't hear Thor calling to be swept back up.

In any case, once Thor gets back he finds his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins) too busy watching bad theatrics celebrating his other son, Loki, to care much for anything.  No surprise that Odin is really Loki in disguise and the real Odin is in a nursing home somewhere on Midgard.

"THEY SEEK HIM HERE, THEY SEEK HIM THERE", they might just as well say before Thor comes upon Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), who helps the Brothers Norse find Odin, who then tells them they have a long-lost sister who is going to kill them all before fading away.  Said sister, Hela, Goddess of Death (Cate Blanchett) now manages to defeat them, even destroying Thor's hammer.  Their escape kind of goes off and Thor ends up on Sakaar.

Sakaar is a rubbish planet, and that isn't a commentary: it's a planet where trash is dumped.  Our hunky hero finds himself at the mercy of The Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum) who runs a gladiator-type competition.  "Sparkles", as The Grandmaster dubs him due to Thor's failed efforts to literally bring down the thunder, is thrown into the arena.  Loki, for his part, has managed to get to Sakaar before his brother, and managed to be among the Grandmaster's Court because...reasons.

Thor is forced to undergo the cruelest torture: have his hair cut.  He also faces off against the Grandmaster's greatest fighter, who happens to be The Hulk.  Thor's thrilled: "he's a friend from work!", he shouts delightfully to the Grandmaster, while Loki looks on with fear.

Hulk, smash, however, and there has to be an actual fight.

At this point I'd argue that in a Thor/Hulk fight I would put my money on the god of thunder.  All Hulk has is brute strength, but Thor has both great physical strength and a warrior's strategy.  Needless to say, however, Thor loses because the Grandmaster ain't about to let his champion win.

Eventually, there is an escape after Thor manages to get Hulk to become Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), and he gets help from Scrapper 142 (Tessa Thompson), who is really the last of the Valkyrie after all her sisters were killed by Hela in a previous coup attempt.

Oh right, Hela.  Well, she's laying siege to Middle-Earth, I mean, Asgard, with Skurge now her henchman.  Only Heimdall (Idris Elba), the previous Gatekeeper, stands in her way as he has hidden the sword that will allow her to invade and conquer the other Nine Realms.  Eventually all "The Revengers" as Thor has taken to calling his compatriots, get back to Asgard to fight Hela to the death.

This is going to make me sound like an awful snob, but I think the reason so many genuinely loved Thor: Ragnarok is because the target audience is either 14-year-old boys or those who think like them.

For example, to escape Sakaar "The Revengers" will have to go through a massive wormhole called "The Devil's Anus".  Granted, I've no proof of this, but I imagine screenwriters Craig Kyle, Eric Pearson and Christopher Yost (46, 37 and 44 respectively at the time of the film's release) all high-fived each other and giggled when they wrote "The Devil's Anus".

I imagine most 14-year-olds would find 'The Devil's Anus' hilarious.  I, sadly, am not 14-years-old and I don't think like one.

What would have been funny, if I had been asked, would be to call it "The Devil's Furnace". At one point however, Loki, with that same straight face he used, would use the exact same line he did in the film: "I'm asking for safe passage through the Anus" by mistake, not realizing what he'd said.  I'd even have allowed Thor, Banner and the Valkyrie to have burst out laughing at his malapropism.

That, however, didn't happen, because Thor: Ragnarok was not interested in trying to be serious.  Now, I can roll with comedy, even in a comic book-based film.  Ant-Man, for example, was a MCU film I genuinely liked in part because it had humor.  However, Thor: Ragnarok's big problem was that it was simply trying too hard to make everyone aware of how 'funny' everything is; it's like someone telling a joke and then asking, "Did you get it?", which as The Betty White once observed, only punctuates how it wasn't funny to begin with.

As I digress, if you look at a genuinely funny comedy, Some Like It Hot, you see the humor comes not necessarily from the premise but from everyone's reaction to it.  It is ludicrous to think anyone would have been taken in by "Josephine and Daphne", but everyone played it as if they were that dumb.  They weren't going on tangents, they weren't making asides, they weren't trying to rattle off quips.  They played the oddball premise perfectly straight, which made Some Like It Hot funnier.

Thor: Ragnarok, on the other hand, kept pounding away the 'LOOK!  WE'RE BEING FUNNY!' bits right from the get-go.  Thor gives a long-winded explanation to his capture and has to pause while spinning.  Over and over we get this 'funny' bits that serve to make the film longer than Some Like It Hot was.  OK, by nine minutes, but still.

There's almost a smugness to Thor: Ragnarok, as if we're supposed to congratulate it for working overtime to be quippy.  We see this every time Hemsworth interacts with someone save Blanchett and maybe Hopkins, when he played it more straight.  Note I said 'straight', not 'great', because no Hemsworth Brother has ever shown me they can actually act, though the film did serve up the Obligatory Shirtless Scene that apparently Hesmworth is required to have in all his films.

Now, I'm told that Chris Hemsworth is a growing comedic genius, somewhere along the lines of a Cary Grant.  I don't find that to be true.

Yes, like Grant, Hemsworth is an incredibly, breathtakingly beautiful man.  Unlike Grant, however, I still think Hemsworth's 'comedic' abilities come not from him genuinely being funny, but by being an incredibly, breathtakingly beautiful man put in forced comedic situations.  Grant never played comedy with an awareness that the character or situation was supposed to be funny.  Hemsworth always plays his 'comedy' fully aware that it's supposed to be funny.  Therein lies the difference.

The one highlight for me was when Hemsworth and Cumberbatch are together, but not because they were actually funny or because Strange was even necessary to Thor: Ragnarok.  My enjoyment came from this 'Battle of the Baritones', to see which one of them could speak in a lower register.

It's hard for me to work up chuckles with exchanges like these:

Thor: "No, I don't have a phone but you could have sent an electronic letter.  It's called an 'email'".
Strange: "Yeah, do you have a computer?"
Thor: "No. What for?"

A lot of what passed for comedy, from "Loki's Midsummer Night's Dream" bit to various exchanges between characters to the playing of Pure Imagination when Thor is introduced to the world of Sakaar to the Valkyrie falling off her ship after she just threatened anyone who would take Thor away from her was, for me, a case of simply trying too hard.

I figure Blanchett had a ball vamping it up for all its worth, but I couldn't feel anything for Hela. I spent most of the time trying to figure out where I'd seen Skurge before, and like everyone else he too was in on the joke, though he wasn't much part of the goings-on save for looking sad from time to time.  Ruffalo was perpetually a Nervous-Nelly when not in Hulk mode, and he wasn't that funny as Hulk either.

Come to think on it, Thor: Ragnarok seemed like two films mashed together, going from one to the other only when the first story seemed to be running out of steam.

Interestingly, Thor: Ragnarok is the first MCU film that I can remember where the CGI was so painfully obvious and fake. In this oddball mashup of Spartacus, Gladiator, The Running Man, Robin Hood and even Androcles and the Lion, it only makes matters worse.

To the film's credit, it is awash in vibrant color, and Immigrant Song is put to good use at the only two real good battle scenes which bookend Thor: Ragnarok.  However, I wonder if the battle scenes were good because of Immigrant Song. 

Bloated, boring and worse, self-aware to the point of parody, I wonder if Thor: Ragnarok set out to deliberately insult my intelligence.  Comedy, to my mind, only works when the characters aren't aware of it.  Everyone here was aware of it, and no matter how hard they tried, when you point out that something is meant to be funny, it almost always isn't.

Next Marvel Cinematic Universe Film: Black Panther

DECISION: D-

The Snowman: A Review (Review #1050)

THE SNOWMAN

For all the vaunted notions of socialist paradises that the Scandinavian countries are feted for, there must be also in the Nordic soul a sense of pervasive dourness, of eternal gloom and perverse misery and hollowness.  It's not a surprise given that Nordic mythology had their gods and goddesses die in epic battle, a fatalism that has never their Viking ancestors. 

I sense this from their crime literature, from Swedish writer Stieg Larsson's Millennium series to that of his Norwegian counterpart Jo Nesbo. These books and film adaptations drown in misery, in perverse sex crimes, in morose detectives and generally unhappy people.  I don't know why that is so, but it's something I've observed, making me wonder what it is about Scandinavians that makes them such miserable folk. 

The Snowman is Nesbo's seventh novel of a series but curiously the first to be made into a film.  I cannot say how close or far the film stays/veers from the original, or whether it was a good idea to adapt this particular novel into a hoped-for franchise.

I can say that The Snowman adaptation we were given is at times an unintended comedy, with the fact that so many highly talented people ended up creating something so wonderfully weird making things all the more baffling.

A young man is hidden away with his mother in a remote Norway, both caught by surprise by the arrive of 'Uncle Jonas'.  Uncle Jonas quizzes the young boy on Norwegian history, and every time he gets an answer wrong he smacks the boy's mother.  Quickly the boy finds out that 'Uncle Jonas' is really his daddy, and that his mother will reveal all to his family.  For reasons unknown Uncle Jonas abandons them there, and for reasons unknown Mother & Boy either give chase or run away, and for reasons unknown Mother slides into thin ice, where Boy barely manages to escape as she drowns.

Move a few decades later, where we come upon our highly troubled lead character with the most unfortunate name of 'Harry Hole' (Michael Fassbender).* He's a drunk and heavy smoker prone to sleeping in the streets and nooks of Oslo but who despite all this looks extremely fit with firm abs and a taut body.  I guess alcoholism, cigarettes and no protection against the winter does not affect your physical beauty.

Anyway, Harry Hole is a brilliant but troubled detective, struggling with his personal relationships with his ex Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her child Oleg (Michael Yates), who for reasons unknown cannot be told is Harry's biological child.  She's moved on with Mathias (Jonas Karlsson), a doctor.  Hole isn't highly regarded but for reasons unknown he's considered among the best detectives on the Oslo Police Force. 

A new officer, Katrina Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson) finds him and informally recruits him to help in a missing person's case.  Using the newest technology Katrina and Harry look for a missing woman, who may be tied to a series of other missing women: all in troubled marriages with children, all of a certain age, all of whom may have seen a particular doctor.

There is also one other thing: a 'creepy' snowman is at the site of all the women's disappearances.  Things come to a head when they are called about another missing woman, Sylvia Ottersen, only to find that she is very much alive and well.  Oddly, as they leave her they are called again to find that 'Sylvia Ottersen' is reported missing.  They return to find Ana Pedersen (Chloe Sevigny), her twin.

Sylvia's head on top of a snowman is found shortly afterwards.

Katrina suspects that these killings are tied to Arne Stop (J.K. Simmons), a billionaire working to get a "Winter World Cup Games" to Oslo.  Stop is creepy, and as time goes by we find that Katrina is tied to this case more than she lets on.  She is the daughter of Rafto (Val Kilmer), who we see in flashbacks that are nine years earlier investigating a similar crime.  His investigation ended when he apparently killed himself in a drunken stupor.

Well, we get more red herrings, one of our leads is killed off because she appears to be totally dimwitted and our killer is revealed.

We end The Snowman with Harry, now missing a finger after his confrontation with the killer who threatened Oleg and Rakel (though curiously, not Mathias), agreeing to look in on another case. No explication is given as to how Harry Hole never lost a finger to the frostbite he should have endured by sleeping outside in the cold Norwegian night.

I simply do not know what it is about filmmakers today who decide not to establish a franchise by making their debut film stand on its own.  The Snowman violates one of my Golden Rules of Filmmaking: Never End Your Movie By Suggesting There Will Be a Sequel.  I know that The Snowman is based on an already-established series, but given how badly they bungled this maiden voyage, what made them think anyone would want to sit through more?

Director Tomas Alfredson made an absolute mess, primarily due to his decision to not allow anyone any actual emotions.  Poor Harry Hole (again, a name that lends itself to total mockery with everyone in the film apparently oblivious to how it sounds).  I know that Alfredson and Fassbender wanted to make Harry Hole into this troubled being, but as played by Fassbender Harry has no emotion even in things that do require some, like when dealing with Oleg.

You know how The Snowman wants us to think of Harry when you see that it takes twelve minutes into the film before Harry actually says something.  Up to that point, removing the prologue, Harry just stares about in misery and stumbles through the streets of Oslo, apparently none the worse for ware.  Alfredson even gives us an Obligatory Shirtless Scene were despite being a lush who hasn't slept well in days or weeks still looks breathtakingly beautiful.

We even get a hint of a crotch shot to marvel at the magnificence of Michael Fassbender.

Worse, the adaptation by Peter Straughan, Hossein Amini and Soren Sveistrup makes a lot of the characters dumb.  For being such a brilliant detective (and to be fair, his interrogation of the little girl showed a deft touch), Harry is also incredibly stupid; he fails to note that if the missing woman had just run off with her lover, she left her purse behind, something Katrina noticed.

Not that Ferguson was any better. The revelation of her 'secret' came across as rote more than shocking, and her death came across as more hilarious than shocking or sad.  She seems to want to outdo Fassbender's catatonic manner. Granted the script made her look almost pathetically idiotic and with contrived moments, but she wasn't that compelling a character to begin with. Simmons appeared to try to sound like Fassbender in terms of accent, but the real piece de resistance was Kilmer, whose accent was even stranger but no less hilarious.

The plot is a mishmash of cliches and straight-up nonsense.  There is no sense of urgency or emotion to finding the missing women or tracking down the killer. The worst part of it all is that The Snowman drags at its nearly two-hour running time. 

Actually, I'm going to walk that back a bit.  The worst part is the editing, an atrocious jumble that made things illogical when they weren't hard to follow.  We jump around from past or present almost at a whim, and the climatic fight between Harry and 'the killer' is so confused that you get no sense of what is going on or how things happened.  It was almost as if they tried to pull a fast one: make up for the boredom by making things confusing in the false hope of making it 'exciting'.

The Snowman may hint at a series of films, but for now, the end result make us not care one bit about more Harry Hole adventures.  To answer the question, 'no, I would not like to build a snowman'.

DECISION: F

*I understand that in the original novels, his name is pronounced 'Ho-leh', but again, for reasons unknown, the filmmakers opted to make it 'Hole', making things just even weirder.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women: A Review

PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN

Truth, I'm told, is sometimes stranger than fiction.  Just like few could have imagined the creation of Winnie-the-Pooh was a horror story, few could also have imagined the creation of Wonder Woman was an origin story filled with S&M and pretensions of intellectualism.  Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is at times quite beautiful, but it is also at times almost demented and choppy with 'characters' who come across as bordering on bonkers.

Using the framing device of an interrogation in 1945 by Josette Frank (Connie Britton), director of the Child Study Association of America, Professor William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) is being questioned about how his superhero Wonder Woman came to be, along with the suggestions of bondage and lesbianism can be interpreted.  Marston defends his creation and openly states that he sees Wonder Woman as a vehicle for propaganda, refusing to make apologies or excuses for the not-quite-subtle or overt sexual nature of the comics.

Marston started out in the film as a well-respected professor of psychology at Harvard's sister college Radcliffe while his equally if not superior wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) is continuously denied a Ph.D. from Harvard because she is a woman.  Into their lives comes Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcoate), who is extremely attractive. Our randy Professor Marston is instantly attracted to the pretty and engaged coed, and Mrs. Marston knows that.

Fortunately, their superior intelligence allows them some leeway into matters of the heart and groins, so Olive can serve as their lab assistant as they work to perfect a lie detector test.  It isn't long before libidos start going off all over the place, as Will gets a hard-on for Olive, while Olive gets her jollies from Elizabeth.  Elizabeth, for her part, is unsure about any attraction to her husband's new obsession, but eventually they all start falling into bed with each other.

Somehow, all this canoodling is met with a dim view at Radcliffe, and the threesome find themselves out in the cold, with Olive now knocked up, presumably by William, who also has children with his wife along with their shared mistress.  Things look dim, until William meets up with Charles Guyette (J.J. Feild), a suave Frenchman who has a sideline showcasing a little sadomasochism.  Our good professor is intrigued by the possibilities, and like the strong independent women they are, both Olive and Elizabeth quickly fall in line with all this kink.

Eventually, Marston comes up with 'Suprema the Wonder Woman' and pitches the idea to various comics, where it is picked up after simplifying things to just 'Wonder Woman'.  Unfortunately, a good neighbor accidentally walks in during a little menage a trois, causing a mini-scandal.  Olive is exiled for the sake of propriety, but after William discovers he is dying of cancer he engineers a reconciliation.

After his death, the two women live together for the next 38 years, and their shared creation becomes an icon.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women may stick close to the reality of this unorthodox group, but it does one type of disservice to the Marstons and Olive Byrne.  It makes them all extremely unpleasant people: smug, generally unlikable and almost arrogant in their sense of moral and intellectual superiority.  Professor William Marston comes off the worst, especially when we go to the 'present' or near-present of his smoke-filled interrogation, which appears to be taking place in an abandoned building.

Every time he spouts off about how his creation is meant to inspire young boys to submit to strong women, how Wonder Woman is a vehicle to promote his own theories, how unapologetic he is by the overt shout-out to bondage in a medium targeted primarily at children, he comes across less as a pioneering 'woke' male feminist and more as a pompous ass/ass-freak.  The film, rather than making him the hero it wants us to see him as, turns him into someone who sees himself above 'morality'.

In an odd sense, William Moulton Marston seems a prototype of all people, Ayn Rand, who had similar ideas about sex: she having a long-term affair with a young man with the 'consent' of her husband.  Only difference is that Frank O'Connor, Miss Rand's long-suffering husband, didn't share in the hijinks.

Also odd is how the film made the women, in their own way, subservient to Marston.  Granted, this is I figure how they wanted it and lived their lives, but for every time Elizabeth raised any objections whether to his dalliances or how irrational it looked to outsiders, eventually she gave in.  "When are going to stop justifying the whims of your cock with science?" Elizabeth shouts at William when he has Olive literally tied up.  That is as far as she ever got to telling her kinky husband off, but soon enough Elizabeth found the joys of rope.

Again, I figure this is how the three of them lived their lives, but it is hard to accept that Elizabeth and Olive were the inspirations for our noble Amazon warrior princess when they seem to in real life submit to the sexual desires of the man who does them both.

It may be truth, but it does weaken them and make the case that far from being strong, they submitted to the whims of Marston's cock.

At times, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women was a little too on-the-nose visually.  When they finally gave in to their carnal passions it was not exactly a full menage a trois in that the three of them weren't going at it simultaneously, but as Olive and Elizabeth took turns on William and he would watch them in turn, writer/director Angela Robinson made it look sublime. When we see Olive clad in her Amazonian garb, the shout-out to the future Diana Prince again is a little too obvious.

I cannot find fault with the performances, if we are meant to think through Luke Evans that Marston was a slightly pompous sex freak or that Heathcote's Olive was a surprisingly weak woman.  Hall as Elizabeth, however, was slightly different.  She was allowed some range as the occasional voice of reason who did have a sense that their life together was not conventional versus Marston and Olive who appeared to think there was nothing even remotely strange in their collective goings-on.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is at times quite luscious, which I figure applies to Evans, Hall and Heathcote as well.  Perhaps a little more time on the actual creation of Wonder Woman and a little less on the sex-romps of this curious trio might have helped the film.  Despite everyone's best efforts, you leave the film thinking this group is shockingly self-absorbed in their sense of superiority sexually, mentally and morally and frankly a little nutty.

William M. Marston: 1893-1947
Elizabeth Marston: 1893-1993
Olive Byrne: 1904-1990

DECISION: C-

Suburbicon: A Review

SUBURBICON

Does anyone know what anyone behind Suburbicon was thinking?  Few films have been such a misfire, such a disaster and a major reason for Suburbicon being such a horror is that George Clooney, directing and cowriting with his longtime producing partner Grant Heslov with Joel and Ethan Coen, simply have no idea what kind of story they want to tell.

At least it looks that way given how many conflicting stories are jammed into this, then add that the tones are also wildly contradictory and you have a film that save for one brief shining moment collapses onto itself.

Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) is your average upper-middle-class white patriarch in the community of Suburbicon, living with his paralyzed wife Rose and her twin sister Margaret (Julianne Moore) and Gardner and Rose's son Nicky (Noah Jupe).  One fateful night, robbers break into the Lodge home, tie up everyone and 'accidentally' kill Rose with an overdose of chloroform.

Despite being a mild-mannered individual, Gardner does not appear to be too broken up about his wife's death.  Even more surprising is Margaret's reaction: she dyes her hair to match Rose's and at one point Nicky, highly traumatized by the events, is stunned to find Gardner spanking Margaret with a ping-pong paddle in the basement with his own pants down.  Margaret, for her part, has turned into a bit of a bitch with Nicky, curtly dismissing his desire to leave Suburbicon.

Making all this all the more outlandish is when Gardner and Margaret are called in to identify the robbers in a lineup.  Gardner is upset that the police called his son into this, but Nicky manages to sneak in and is absolutely flabbergasted when both of them say the robbers are not there when they clearly are.

There's a reason for all this: the 'robbery' was all part of a plot by Gardner and Margaret to kill two birds with one stone: kill off Rose and get the insurance money so they could be together in Aruba.  The pesky question of Nicky is handled by planning to ship him off to military school.  Nicky, more alarmed than ever by the goings-on, calls his Uncle Mitch (Gary Basaraba) for help. 

The 'robbers' come back: they are loan sharks coming for Gardner for the money he owes, which has not come in because the insurance company is dubious.  They send an investigator, Bud Cooper (Oscar Isaac) to investigate.  He is open about his suspicions of foul play, sending Margaret into hysterics.  Bud comes back, asking for all the insurance money to keep him silent.  While he also brags about knowing the dangers he is in, that does not stop him from getting poisoned by Margaret, then whacked by Gardner.

The loan sharks decide they've waited enough and force the situation: one of them will kill Margaret and Nicky while the other will put the squeeze on Gardner, whom the police are starting to look on with suspicion.  Margaret poisons a sandwich and milk to kill Nicky, the boy who knows too much, but Nicky hides in his room, terrified.  She soon gives up and is killed by one of the loan sharks.  He comes up to try and kill a terrified Nicky, but Uncle Mitch manages to come, saving him but sacrificing himself in the process.  The other loan shark follows Gardner, who is dumping Bud's body, and is killed himself when he fails to see a speeding emergency truck collide into him.

Gardner comes to find so many dead bodies and a traumatized Nicky.  Calmly eating the prepared sandwich and milk (which I figure would have already gone sour after all those hours, but whatever), he tells his son he can either go along with his plan or have his father kill him.  Fortunately, the next morning Nicky walks out of the house, his father being the one who ends up dead with poisoning.

If you notice in that summary, not once did I mention anything about the Meyers Family, the first African-American family in Suburbicon, whose presence eventually causes a riot while all this wild white privilege nonsense is going on in the house behind theirs.  Here is a primary reason why Suburbicon is such a disaster.  Somehow, Clooney decided to have two stories in the same film that never relate to each other.

A film could have been made of the Meyers facing overt bigotry in this all-white community.  A film could have been made about the duplicity of Gardner and Margaret.  You could even make a whole feature about Isaac's character, which would have proved far more interesting.   Suburbicon, it appears, decided to throw everything at it to see what stuck, and what stuck was nothing.

Clooney and Heslov rammed some kind of movie into what appears to be an early draft for a Coen Brothers dark comedy, and while the fact that I'm not a Coen Brothers fan of their own quirky worldview does not help, the two separate stories are so mismatched that there is not much if any case to have one intrude on the other.

At this point, I do wonder why Suburbicon thought people would enjoy seeing a comedy where a child is deeply traumatized, nearly killed and told by his own father that he would murder him.  It is rather ghastly that such a concept would be thought of as a delightful farce.

This is especially so given that Clooney seems hellbent on giving Suburbicon a faux-1950s veneer, with Alexandre Desplat's score giving off all the wrong clues about what it is meant to be. The opening music and 'commercial' for Suburbicon the community makes it come across as an almost too-cutesy comedy, while at other times it makes what should be dramatic moments appear as farce (the music at Margaret's killing seems oddly comical).

You can cut them some slack given it is meant as a 'dark comedy' but why then try to have drama over the Meyers, who barely register as characters, in something that is meant to be more wittily ironic?

Moore plays the faux-Stepford Wife-type Margaret as perpetually simpering when I would have advised a touch of the femme fatale, and Damon never makes the case for whether he is a nebbish stuck in a lousy set of decisions or a criminal mastermind because he plays both the same way. Jupe, at his young age, manages to out-act them, his large eyes and frightened manner making Nicky a survivor in this nightmare.

Isaac is the bright spot apart from Jupe as the shady insurance agent, full of snark and smarts.  However, the screenplay again undercuts him: how he could not see the obvious attempt to kill him despite his claims of being able to spot such things is bizarre.  It also makes one wonder why, if he has indeed done this before, no one else has tried to do him in.  Furthermore, why didn't Gardner and Margaret say that the thugs were in the lineup?  It would have gotten rid of them, unless they feared they would squeal, which they could deny, but I think plot is something Suburbicon did not care for.

The comedy does not work.  The drama does not work.  Nothing works in Suburbicon.

DECISION: F