Gotham: That's Entertainment Review

GOTHAM: THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT

Well, in the eternal dance of whether Jerome Valeska is or is not The Joker, we seem to have come up with a definitive answer.

Maybe.

And that's with Jerome's apparent end.

That's Entertainment, like Jerome's plan, seems a stall for time before moving on to hopefully bigger and better things.  It also seems a weird rehash of the 1989 Batman film to where one wonders if anyone in the production wasn't aware of it.

Jerome the "not" Joker (Cameron Monaghan) has abducted the interim Mayor, the Commissioner, the Catholic archbishop and the head of a 'good society' organization as part of a major plan.  That plan involves blowing the heads off each of these hostages until his demands are met.

Those demands are that his twin brother Jeremiah (Monaghan in a dual role) and Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) be brought to him.  Captain Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) is reluctant to do that.  For once, Bruce's valet Alfred (Sean Pertwee) and his on/off gal-pal Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova) agree that Bruce shouldn't do it.  Bruce, however, believes it is the right thing to do.

All this is actually just one part of an even larger scheme that Jerome has cooked up with his Legion of Horribles: Mr. Freeze (Nathan Darrow), The Mad Hatter (Benedict Samuel), Scarecrow (David W. Thompson) and Firefly (Michelle Ventimilla).  Their plan is to unleash Scarecrow's madness gas on the citizens.

For once, however, one of the criminal masterminds, Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) is horrified when he finds out the entire scheme.  He does not want anything to do with all this madness, but Jerome already knew he was wavering.  He has Pengy put on the blimp that will release the gas to see them all die.

Gordon, however, with help from Lucius Fox (Chris Chalk) and even from Pengy manages to stop the slaughter.  However, at long last, Jerome appears to die from a combination of getting shot and falling off a building.

In our subplot, Barbara Kean (Erin Richards) is still feeling her way with her powers as the Demon's Head. Power, along with her League of Assassins' Amazonian Guard, goes to her head.  Bonkers Babs now has convinced herself she is a virtual goddess, but she wants to use her powers to merely enrich herself.

This does not sit well with Tabitha (Jessica Lucas), who thinks the whole thing is deranged, even for Bonkers Babs.  As befits a goddess with a private army, Babs dumps Tabitha and has her thrown out.

However, there is hope on the horizon, for a renegade group of League of Shadows group want to remove Barbara, and take Tabitha with them as part of a secret plan.

As I mentioned, I said the answer to whether Jerome is 'the Joker' is definitely maybe only because in what is meant as a surprise, Jeremiah has been given a special brand of Scarecrow's toxin that seems to have made him bonkers too.  As such, it seems that the entire character of Jerome was just one long con, and the 'twin' a convenient way to keep things going.

I don't think it is particularly original to have the twin essentially take on the other's role, especially since Monaghan was playing a variation on Heath Ledger's iconic take on the Joker.

I have stated many times how no actor following Ledger in the role of The Joker can ever escape his shadow, and while Monaghan has done a great job as the proto-Joker, he still faces that daunting task of following in Ledger's footsteps.

Monaghan has shown his range with playing these dual roles, but it is interesting that for the idea that this is a Legion of Horribles, there was really room for only two of them: Jerome and Penguin.

Nothing shakes my belief that Robin Lord Taylor is among the very best things in Gotham, and That's Entertainment shows what mastery he has on the role of Oswald Cobblepot/Penguin.

We see something we haven't seen from Pengy: actual human emotion divorced from his drive for power or revenge.  He's willing to go along with any crime that gets him either, but the wholesale slaughter of people just for the 'joy' of killing is one bridge he cannot cross.

In his fear of this madness down to the comedy of seeing Pengy attempt to fly a blimp and frustration of being stuck on it after all this has happened, RLT shows he can handle both drama and comedy so well.

Let's face it: what can be funnier than seeing that Penguins CAN Fly!

It's a shame that the other members of the Legion had smaller roles, though they did them well.  I do wish Darrow's Mr. Freeze had a larger role, but one can't top his entrance to the Wayne Enterprises' lab.

Fair warning: the cinematic nature of the raid was fantastic, but it could cause epileptic seizures with all the flashing lights to where I think a warning should have been made.

Another warning should have occurred with regards to a longstanding issue: the violence.  Even with the shaky-cam and quick cuts, we can see people's heads explode, and I still am highly troubled by this.

We still see a strong group of performances: McKenzie's steely Gordon, Bicondova's Selina, our anti-heroine, Donal Logue's quippy Bullock, Mazouz's moral Bruce.  He and Bicondova make such a wonderful pairing that I'd be happy with a show about Bat-Cat separate from everything else.

As for the subplot, Richards has not failed ever since she went from bland Barbara to Bonkers Babs.  It isn't her fault that the subplot itself is pretty wild even for Gotham.

There were other issues apart from the violence in That's Entertainment.  The plot bears a striking similarity to Batman (the poisoned gas, the 'Joker' falling to his death, even the gift).  The gift itself is so obviously in Jerome's taste that Jeremiah must be stupid to not think his twin would not be behind it.

That's Entertainment had some good performances that lifted it slightly from the story that seemed filler for a larger plan.  I can't fault it for that, although it is still troubling in its graphic nature.

6/10

Next Episode: To Our Deaths and Beyond

Love, Simon: A Review

LOVE, SIMON

Representation is all the rage these days.

We see it with Crazy Rich Asians, which has been feted (correctly, I think) for its all-Asian cast.  We see it with A Wrinkle in Time, which has been feted (to varying degrees of success) for its casting of a biracial female lead character and a multicultural cast. We see it with the television show Doctor Who, which has been feted (horrendously in my view) for casting a Female in a role that has been male for 50+ years.

We even have a female Predator, which appears to some to be a landmark equal to the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment.

We see 'representation' everywhere in terms of casting women, people of color, LGBT actors/actresses, females of color, and LGBT characters of all ethnic backgrounds. I have long-argued that so long as a role does not specifically call for a particular ethnicity/gender, it should be open to a wider casting. Perhaps this is why I do not see a female King Lear (Glenda Jackson be damned).

Sometimes it gets to the point of parody; in Spider-Man: Homecoming, for example, while it was good to see a more ethnically diverse Queens, one began to wonder if Peter Parker was the only white male in the borough.

Now we have Love, Simon, a film feted for being a young adult romantic comedy with a gay lead character. I've heard it compared to a John Hughes movie (which, curiously, are now seen as 'problematic' and 'bigoted', so I wonder if that's a good thing).  I've heard it called a landmark in cinema.

After having seen it, I just wonder, 'were all teen romantic comedies this dopey'?

Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) tells us he's just like us: with successful parents, a bedroom larger than my office, appropriately multicultural friends and a daily iced coffee habit.

At this point, I'd like to say that 'iced coffee' is a crime against humanity.  Coffee should always be hot, but I'm not one to dump on these hip Millennials.

Anyway, Simon is pretty average save for one thing: he's a closeted gay young man.

This fact is one he keeps to himself, until on Creek Secrets, a blog for his high school, there's a post from "Blue", another closeted teen male.  Using the pseudonym 'Jacques', Simon writes to Blue, and they begin exchanging messages.

Simon has fallen in love with Blue despite not knowing who he is (or even if he is, for I guess 'catfishing' did not exist when the book was written). Simon begins to wonder who 'Blue' is.  Could it be Bram (Keiynan Lonsdale), teammate to one of Simon's friends, Nick (Jorge Lendenborg, Jr.)?  How about Lyle (Joey Pollari), the hot Waffle House waiter?  Then there's Cal (Miles Heizer), the pianist who is working with Simon and his other friends Leah (Katherine Langford) and Abby (Alexandra Shipp) on a high school production of Cabaret.

I'm stopping here again to ask, 'Seriously, Cabaret?'  I could understand The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, or Annie, but what high school chooses as a musical production Cabaret?  I'm surprised they didn't pick Urinetown or The Book of Mormon.

As it stands, the M.C. of High School Cabaret, Martin (Logan Miller) discovers Simon's trove of messages and blackmails him to help Martin woo Abby.  Martin's boorish and generally annoying to bonkers behavior alienate him from everyone, but Simon goes along with this.

This requires Simon to manipulate his friends like chess pieces to keep his secret.  However, after Martin publicly humiliates himself when revealing his unrequited love to an uninterested Abby, he decides the best way to get the school to stop laughing at him is to out Simon.

This does not go over well with everyone: Simon's friends feel betrayed by how he tried to manipulate him, the other students either shun him or mock him, and Simon's revelations scare off Blue.

Simon opts to come out to his parents, his father Jack (Josh Duhamel), a former jock, accepts him more slowly than his patriarchy-protesting mother Emily (Jennifer Garner). With Simon formally out but still not adopting a different personality, he posts one last message on Creek Secrets: he will ride the Ferris Wheel and asks Blue to reveal himself by riding alongside him.

In the end, Blue reveals himself and they share a kiss to the cheers of their fellow classmates.

Yes, as much as I try I just end up getting caught up in details when reviewing films.  In Crazy Rich Asians, I got hung up on the fact that an economics professor never heard of the Singapore version of the Rockefeller/Buffet family.  In Tomb Raider, I got hung up on the fact that a secret room undiscovered for seven years was cleaner than my bedroom.

With Love, Simon, I get hung up on the idea that a high school would think Cabaret is the perfect high school musical.  Seriously, who the Hell does Cabaret in high school?!

What I found surprising in Love, Simon is how unrealistic it is.  If the film had been set in the 1980s or even 1990s, Simon's secret would be more surprising and coming out more courageous.  However, at a time when teens have seen same-sex weddings and when LGBT characters proliferate television screens in excess of their actual percentage of the overall population (6.4% to 4.5%), it seems odd for Simon or Blue to be as closeted as they are; from Teen Wolf to among others, Gotham, Doctor Who and the failed spin-off Class, Star Trek: Discovery, Glee, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Fosters, Game of Thrones, and frankly far too many to list, it seems almost bonkers to think any of our teens would be shocked by Simon's sexuality.

As a side note, director Greg Berlanti also oversees the so-called 'Arrowverse', a set of comic-book based shows, each of which has at least one major LGBT character.  Again, with a large number of LGBT characters on television, would today's teens really find a gay student the subject of scandal?

Love, Simon also has some quite surprisingly bad moments, most of them involving Miller's Martin (and as a side note, I found the whole 'Simon left his emails open' bit highly contrived).  Meant as a 'wacky' and clueless character, Martin comes across as both unrealistic and genuinely insane.  No amount of kowtowing to teen film tropes makes the mascot interrupting the National Anthem to make a wild love declaration funny or real.

Curiously, the actual mystery of Blue seems more a plot device than a real search, and I never thought that Simon really fell in love with Blue.  When Blue finally unmasks himself, it is someone whom the film forgot about for a long stretch, and while it isn't surprising, it does make one wonder why Simon couldn't put it together.

How many black Jewish guys could there possibly be at his high school?

I also didn't understand why no one wondered if Simon wasn't gay.  He has more female friends than male friends.  His room is filled with rather poetic art.  He has sleepovers with his female BFF.  Granted, it's been decades since I was a teen, but all this made me wonder why there wasn't speculation beforehand.

Also, it might be my background, but I know my parents would never allow a sleepover with a female even if she had been my BFF since elementary.

Love, Simon has positives.  The scenes between Simon and his parents are moving and close to real, with surprisingly good turns from Garner and Duhamel.  As Simon, Nick Robinson had a somewhat weary look on his face, down to where I wondered if Simon got enough sleep.  The real standout was Shipp as Abby, to where I would have preferred a film about her than our rather pleasant, nonthreatening yet blank Simon.

Tony Hale and Natasha Rothwell provided comedy as the too-eager-to-fit-in Vice Principal Mr. Worth and the theatrically frustrated Ms. Albright, though why Mr. Worth was wearing a rainbow flag lapel pin is left unanswered.

Love, Simon is not terrible.  It just doesn't seem all that interesting or intelligent. In its defense, those two traits are shared by the title character, so there's that.

Seriously...a high school production of Cabaret?

DECISION: C-

Crazy Rich Asians: A Review

CRAZY RICH ASIANS

I'm not one to rain on anyone's parade, so I go into Crazy Rich Asians with some sense of trepidation.  Why? Because the film is not particularly original.  In fact, in terms of plot, it is pretty much standard to the point of playing almost as parody.

However, it knows what it is, it has a delightful, pleasant manner to it and is a nice bit of fluff, so I genuinely cannot hold its self-awareness against it.

Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), an economics professor at NYU, has been dating Nick Young (Henry Golding) for some time.  Both are obviously quite smitten with each other, but Nick is rather secretive about his family.  As such, Rachel is surprised when Nick invites her to go to his home in Singapore for his best friend Colin's (Chris Pang) wedding, where Nick will be best man.

This will be the perfect way for Rachel to meet Nick's parents, or at least his formidable mother, the elegant and powerful society doyenne Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh).  Rachel, however, is puzzled over how Nick can afford a first-class section of the flight to Singapore.

It is only after arriving in Singapore and reuniting with her old college friend Peik Lin Goh (Awkawfina) that Rachel discovers that the Young Family is, in the words of Peik Lin not just 'rich' but 'crazy rich', having vast holdings in real estate and development.

At this point, I had a question that the film and those I've talked to about the film have not been able to give me an answer to: Rachel, an economics professor, was thoroughly unaware of the economic hold the Young Family had on the Singapore economy?

As Rachel attempts to navigate the social world and whirl of high-society Singapore, with her wacky BFF in tow, she and Nick split up for their various bachelor/bachelorette parties.  The other girls give our American-Chinese the cold shoulder, down to leaving a dead fish and writing 'gold-digging bitch' in 'psycho-killer letters' as Rachel says.

Only the bride-to-be Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno) and Astrid (Gemma Chan), Nick's cousin with her own marital problems, show Rachel kindness.  Also in her corner is Cousin Oliver (Nico Santos), the self-described 'pink sheep' of the extended Young family, who becomes fast friends with Peik Lin.

Nick is now struggling between taking his place in the Young Family unofficial Singapore monarchy and being with Rachel, the family expecting him to take his place in their reign over the island nation. He certainly feels the pull, given that the other potential heirs are to just about everyone's mind unsuitable.  Nick's two other male cousins, the Hong Kong-based social climber/insult machine Edison aka Eddie (Ronnie Chieng) and Taiwan-based film director Alistair (Remi Hii) essentially too wrapped up in themselves to lead.

Astrid of course can't, because she's a woman, odd for such a female-dominated clan as the Youngs, but there it is.

Rachel attempts to woo the Young family and show them her mettle. The showdown is at the wedding, where Rachel's smarts and casualness win over the haughty Princess Intan, a surprising event given Her Royal Highness is about the only woman in Singapore wealthier and more powerful than Eleanor or her sisters.  However, at the lavish wedding celebration Rachel's secret is revealed, a secret so secret even Rachel didn't know about it.  Ultimately though, like in all romantic comedies, things end happily, with Rachel now engaged to being the unofficial Princess of Singapore, with unofficial Queen Eleanor's tacit approval.

Replace 'wealthy' with 'eccentric' and Crazy Rich Asians bears more than a striking similarity to You Can't Take It With You.  You have the wealthy family with the son, the 'poor' family with the daughter, a meeting betwixt them that goes horrifically wrong, the girl spurning the boy, the wealthy family having a change of heart and the couple reunited.

You can even argue that Crazy Rich Asians can also be a relation to of all things, the film Jumping the Broom. Again, we have a wealthy family and a poor family tied by potential marriage, with the added bonus that both films have secrets about parentage playing a role in the story.  The difference between Jumping the Broom and Crazy Rich Asians is that the bride, not the groom, came from the wealthy family.

Here is a test: replace 'Asian' with any other ethnicity/race (Indian, Hispanic, African, African-American, Arab, Jewish, Native American, even yes, Caucasian), and would it be called 'original'.  I would say not. 

There is a difference, however, between 'original' and 'entertaining'. 

I don't think anyone can seriously call the actual plot of Crazy Rich Asians "original".  I think we can call the film Crazy Rich Asians entertaining, if familiar. Perhaps its very familiarity is what makes it entertaining.  The film focuses on this lavish family, but in just about every family, people will find a potential mother-in-law who dislikes us, other potential relatives and friends who will help us, and the hope that true love will conquer all.

One positive aspect in Crazy Rich Asians is that despite being 'crazy rich', the Young family is mostly quite pleasant.  Eleanor and her sisters can have a Bible study and be perfectly accepting of the flamboyant Cousin Oliver.  There's a long scene where the Youngs are making dumplings together as a family, a very relatable scene in that most families have a custom or tradition that they enjoy or at least partake in to have continuity.

WRONG COUSIN OLIVER!

You also have some wonderful performances.  Ramos all but steals the movie as Cousin Oliver (and I did wonder if Kevin Kwan, who wrote the novel, was making a pun).  It might have been a bit of a stereotype: the quippy, flamboyant gay man, but Ramos didn't make him a caricature.

Also, his quip about loving Rachel's dress, describing it as 'Disco Cleopatra', was highly amusing.  Curiously, while I found Awkawfina's Peik Li too broad and over-the-top, I figure this is how the character is supposed to be.  Ken Jeong, who has a small role as her father Mr. Goh, refers to his daughter as looking like 'an Asian Ellen', so we figure that Peik Li is not meant to be subtle.

I actually would not mind a buddy comedy with Peik Li and Cousin Oliver.

Astrid, a most fascinating character who out of the three main cousins has the most extended storyline (even if it is still a bit shortchanged), would make for an interesting spinoff film herself. Chan made Astrid into someone who didn't blink when told earrings could be bought 'at cost' of $1.4 million but who was also sad in her marriage to a man she loved but who felt a need to compete against her.

Perhaps this is one of Crazy Rich Asians' flaws.  It had so many stories and characters floating by that it soon became hard to keep track of them all.  Astrid had the most interesting story of the three potential heirs, leaving the crass Eddie with little to do and Alistair barely registering. Same goes for Colin's frenemy Bernard (Jimmy O. Yang), a boorish figure whose relationship with Colin seems inexplicable.

As for the three principles, there is nothing that will dissuade me from my Michelle Yeoh love.  As Eleanor, she balances between being haughty and hurt, between the 'villainess' and the genuinely caring and protective mother. A raised eyebrow, Yeoh shows, is more powerful than a body blow. 

Wu is a delight at Rachel: strong yet vulnerable, with an ability to recite witty dialogue as if it were natural, a real heroine and someone you root for.

Golding, best known as a television show host, does well as the hunky Nick.  We get our obligatory shirtless shots of Golding and Pierre Png as Astrid's husband, and while I sometimes sensed some discomfort and hesitation from Golding, I think he acquitted himself well.

Sometimes the opulence becomes almost vulgar, not that the Goh family didn't come across as nouveau-riche horrors.  However, Adele Lim and Peter Chiarelli's screenplay gave them nice touches and a chance to mock stereotypes, such as when Mr. Goh advised his two youngest daughters to eat because 'there are poor children starving in America'.

Crazy Rich Asians, under the strong direction of John M. Chu, sometimes indulges in the consumerism and gaudiness of its trappings. It feels longer than its two-hour running time, but on the whole it is a very nice film that does not reinvent the wheel but has a lot of heart and humor in its familiar story.

DECISION: B-

Isle of Dogs (2018): A Review

ISLE OF DOGS

Wes Anderson has always been a bit hit-and-miss for me. Sometimes, like with Moonrise Kingdom or The Grand Budapest Hotel, he manages to win me over to his self-consciously whimsical manner.  Other times, like with The Darjeeling Limited, he is far too consciously whimsical to the point of maddening.

Isle of Dogs, while visually impressive, is in the latter category of the Anderson oeuvre, one that is remote and more interested in how it looks than in how it makes one feel.

The film is divided into four parts (one of Anderson's many film traits): a Prologue, then The Little Pilot, The Search for Spots and Atari's Lantern.

Japan, not too-distant-future.  The evil six-term mayor/dictator of Megasaki, Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura) expels all dogs from Megasaki due to their overpopulation and diseases.

It is pointed out that the Kobayashis, who have had a firm hold over their district for centuries, are cat-lovers, their longstanding hatred for dogs having existed all these years.  Curiously, this detail seems irrelevant despite it being mentioned.

The first dog formally exiled to Trash Island is Spots (Liev Schriber), dog to Mayor Kobayashi's nephew/ward Atari (Koyu Rankin).

I'd like to ask why someone who hates dogs the way Mayor Kobayashi does would hire a dog to be his ward/successor's guard, but Anderson is too involved with how cute everything is to offer any answers.

Anyway, we see that I believe six months later the various dogs on Trash Island fight for scraps.  We focus on one pack: Rex (Edward Norton), King (Bob Balaban), Duke (Jeff Goldblum), Boss (Bill Murray) and Chief (Bryan Cranston).  Chief is the most negative of the bunch: a stray who finds himself with this group of formerly elite dogs (one was a baseball team mascot, another a pet food commercial spokesman).

Atari crashes his little plane on Trash Island, determined to rescue Spots.  At first it is believed he is dead, but Rex notices that the corpse's tag reads 'Sports' not 'Spots', so the group, including a most reluctant man-averse Chief, help Atari begin The Search for Spots.

Mayor Kobayashi will stop at nothing to 'rescue' his ward and exterminate all dogs in his own 'final solution'. If it means ignoring and destroying proof that a cure for what ails the dogs has been found, so be it.  If it means assassinating Professor Watanabe (Akira Ito), head of the almost irrelevant opposition 'Science Party', so be it.

Atari, however, does not want to be rescued.  Playing stirring music from Seven Samurai, Atari will not be denied.  Eventually, a bond between Atari and Chief comes about, especially after finding that Chief, far from being black, is actually white...and Spots' brother!

Into this comes foreign-exchange student Tracy Walker (Greta Gerwig).  She is the high school investigative reporter who rallies the students and citizens in a rebellion of sorts against Mayor Kobayashi and his sham elections and murderous plans.

It all comes to a head when the Trash Island dogs, warned of their impending mass killing, get to Megasaki to stop this.  In the end, all is well: Atari and Tracy begin a relationship, with Atari ending up the new mayor, Mayor Kobayashi having a change of heart but still getting locked up for his crimes along with his cohorts, including his right-hand man Major Domo (Akira Takayama), and Chief, now Atari's guard, resuming something of a romance with Nutmeg (Scarlett Johannson), the show-dog he met on Trash Island.

In terms of visuals, Isle of Dogs is beautiful.  While it is mostly stop-motion animation, there also appear to be purely animated moments that make it visually splendid.

I imagine that one could enjoy Isle of Dogs if one put the movie on mute and just looked at it, impressed with the attention to detail in the dogs' fur.  That might make one miss out on Alexandre Duplat's score, which uses traditional Japanese music as a starting point.

However, the mute might also make one enjoy Isle of Dogs, as the movie ends up being quite boring.  I put this to Anderson and his writing collaborators: Roman Coppola, Coppola's cousin Jason Schwartzman, and Mayor Kobayashi himself, Kunichi Nomura.

I never lost the sense that they all thought they were being extremely clever in their script, but sometimes one can be too clever for their own good.  It reminds me of one of my mother's sayings, "That person is so smart that he/she is dumb", meaning that while the person is highly intelligent they also find it difficult to impossible to be relatable.  Such is the case with Isle of Dogs.

I could not shake the idea that Isle of Dogs was far too impressed with itself, which is why despite having a good opportunity to be endearing or even human the film is cold, remote, distant.  I genuinely did not care if Atari found Spots or bonded with Chief.

Not once did I care about any creature in Isle of Dogs because Anderson, at his worst, cannot bring himself to care about his characters.  He cares passionately about the look of things, but Anderson seems more concerned with the visuals than the emotions.

We also have other problems.  I find the name 'Atari' self-consciously cute.  I find Chief referring to Nutmeg at one point as 'Felix's bitch' a bad pun.  I also find Tracy, with her big blonde Afro and black power salute to fit into the 'white savior' narrative.

The only English-speaking human character (the dogs are 'translated' into English, and Anderson finds ways to translate the other character's Japanese without subtitles), it is our American character who pushes to stand up to this dictator.  Without the intervention of this foreigner, we would not have had the ultimate saving of the dogs.

Anderson can dress it up any way he wants, but Tracy does fit into a 'white savior' narrative.

I have also heard that Isle of Dogs is political allegory about a Trump/Putin-type figure expelling 'others', with a xenophobic bent, sham elections, a whipped-up electorate, locking up beings in cages, murdering opponents.  If one wants to see Isle of Dogs as political allegory they are free to do so, but if that was the motivation at this point I genuinely don't care.

Apart from the look of the film I don't see anything to recommend it.  I enjoyed Goldblum's Duke, constantly passing on gossip he heard with no actual source, and the perpetual calls from Norton's Rex for votes on all matters.  However, sometimes one hears the actors and not the characters to the point the voices become more important.

Isle of Dogs reminds me of a funeral: there's a beautiful corpse, but it's dead inside.

DECISION: D-

The Spy Who Dumped Me: A Review

THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME

I think my review for The Spy Who Dumped Me can be summed up pretty easily.  There were many times when I literally covered me eyes to avoid watching more of this horror, and many other times when I was all but shouting "KILL THEM", the 'them' being the protagonists.

Actually, I think I did shout "KILL THEM!" out loud.

God Help Me if I see a worse movie this year, for The Spy Who Dumped Me has found itself among the most horrifying experiences I have had in movie-watching, certainly as of now.

Audrey Stockton (Mila Kunis) is celebrating her birthday, but it's an unhappy one: her boyfriend, Drew (Justin Theraux) just dumped her via text.  Only her wacky BFF Madison (Kate McKinnon) is there to help her through this.

What Audrey does not know is that Drew is actually a spy for the CIA, information she gets from Sebastian (Sam Heughan), an MI-6 agent working with Duffer (Hassan Minhaj), a CIA agent who constantly brings up the fact he went to Harvard.

Drew breaks into Audrey's apartment to retrieve an item: a second-place trophy for Fantasy Football, but gets shot by a Ukrainian Madison picked up for a tryst who is really an assassin.  Now everyone is after Audrey and Madison, with them fleeing to Vienna to follow Drew's directive about turning this trophy over to a special agent.

Well, our pair start a wild tour of Europe, hitting various cities with all sorts of assassins after them, with only Sebastian, under orders from his supervisor Wendy (Gillian Anderson) from dying.  Not that Audrey and Madison aren't good at killing people or getting others killed accidentally, since Audrey's shooting skills have been enhanced by her time playing video games.

Finally, with help from Sebastian, Audrey and Madison are going to finally capture those after them in Berlin, who are after what is in the trophy: a flash-drive (aka the McGuffin).

Despite all this, there genuinely was no plot in The Spy Who Dumped Me, at least none that found any sense.  The film is wildly out-of-focus, unsure of what it wants to be.  It's billed as a comedy; nothing here really is funny, particularly the rather gruesome ways people are killed or the graphic sexual innuendo and nudity that I figure is meant to elicit laughs.  They only elicited either groans or horror.

I kept thinking how many times the film lost an opportunity to be genuinely funny or exciting courtesy of director/co-writer Susanna Fogel (w/David Iserson).  What if Audrey and Madison were already in Europe & caught up in a whirlwind romance with Drew, who would pop up every so often to help/hinder them?  What if they kept accidentally escaping or causing chaos?  What if the second place trophy was just a second place trophy that Drew was actually proud of?

There was no sense, no rhyme or reason for anything in The Spy Who Dumped Me.

Beyond the lousy script were the frightful, dare I say almost Satanically-bad performances?  Apart from Black Swan, I cannot say I have found Kunis to have given a good performance in any film (such as Jupiter Ascending).  Here, her main mode of performance was to make faces, reacting in a horribly exaggerated manner and attempting to force the comedy, failing every time.

McKinnon, I'm told, is another comedic genius.  Granted, she was the best part in the Ghostbusters reboot, but The Spy Who Dumped Me makes a case for her being wildly over-praised.  Drew, in a flashback, is seen telling Madison if anyone has ever told her she is 'a bit much', and the film wants you to feel sad for her, but in reality Drew is right.  Madison is such an annoying and irrational character, broad beyond the point of tolerable.

I genuinely question her sanity, and McKinnon's efforts to make Madison funny or even human come more from desperation than anything else.   At one point Madison is seen almost strangled by the 'comedic' mad Russian assassin, and I genuinely wanted Madison to die.

Fortunately for Heughan and Theroux, all they were really required to do was be good-looking, which they were.  Anderson wasn't in the film long enough to make this a black mark on her career (though she was just cashing a check).  Also cashing checks were Jane Curtin and Paul Reiser as Madison's parents, who seemed to come from not just another draft but from a whole other movie.

Minhaj proved more interesting as the pompous Duffer than the other characters. As such, not only would I have preferred to have seen a Duffer/Sebastian film but also found that Duffer's rather cruel killing was horrible, but what they did to his corpse was worse.

Side note: I once was at a Starbucks when a man approached me and asked if I was 'Hassan'.  I said I wasn't and went back to my mocha & Majesty Magazine. Less than five minutes later the same man came up to me and started speaking to me in Arabic.  I just looked up and kind of snapped, "Look, I am NOT Hassan!".

The acting was atrocious and cringe-inducing.  The plot idiotic and irrational.  The violence was graphic to the point of sadistic.

The Spy Who Dumped Me is not a movie.  It's a crime against cinema.

DECISION: F

Papillon (2018): A Review (Review #1095)

PAPILLON

Never having seen the original version of Papillon, I think that is actually a plus in that I am unencumbered by any prejudice and can see the remake of the Steve McQueen/Dustin Hoffman original without any burdens about how it compares to the original.

Sadly, despite its best efforts, this version of Papillon cannot erase the original despite actually being shorter than the original and unknown to this viewer.

Henri Charrière (Charlie Hunnam), nicknamed 'Papillon' due to the butterfly tattoo at the base of his neck ('papillon' being French for 'butterfly') is a petty thief in 1931 Paris, a man-about-town enjoying something of a good life.  One day, however, he is framed for murder for dubious reasons.

It could be because his employer discovered he was holding out on him, or the criminal gang he was with needed a patsy for the death of someone, or some kind of jealousy due to his newest girlfriend. Anyway, in short order he is sent off to French Guyana to serve his sentence.

Among those going to the penal colony is Louis Dega (Rami Malek), a forger who is known to have much money.  Papillon offers a deal: he will be his unofficial bodyguard if Dega will finance his escape.  At first, he declines the offer but after another inmate is killed before arriving he agrees.

Once at the jungle prison, Papillon continues to plot his escape, but he takes his chances almost haphazardly when he and Dega are ordered to take the body of another prisoner who was guillotined for killing a guard in his own escape attempt. 

Since Papillon didn't end up killing the guard, eh is only sent to solitary for two years. This experience drives him almost to the point of madness, especially after he refuses to name the source of coconuts to his measly rations.

Once out, Papillon again meets with Dega and two others to make another escape attempt.  This almost succeeds in that they do get off the island and appear to find refuge among natives and the nuns who work with them.  However, that too falls apart and they are retaken.

Now, after five years of solitary, Papillon is sent to Devil's Island, where once again he sees Dega who was sent there directly.  Still, Papillon dreams of escaping.  He manages to do so, but without Dega going this time.

Moving to 1969, Papillon slips into France where he is still a wanted criminal to offer up his memoirs of his time in the French penal system, insisting it must be published in France. 

Again, despite not having seen the original Papillon, I find that there is no real reason to have this version, let alone thinking that it will supplant the original.

I think part of the reason Papillon falters is that we get some very curious decisions by director Michael Noer.  First, there is a very odd set of editing decisions early on in his pre-prison time when we shift between the night before and the day of his arrest.

It jumps back and forth between them in a very disjointed manner, as if they were trying to be a bit too artistic.

Another element is that there never seemed to be a genuine friendship between Papillon and Dega. Despite the film's best efforts, they never seemed to actually like each other, let alone make so many sacrifices for each other.  It isn't as if they hated each other, but the relationship between Papillon and Dega never moved above a purely business one, even when the film wanted to make it a friendship.

Other curious elements were with the characters.  I can go with the idea that Papillon's grip on sanity would lead him to imagine Dega as a mime, but I did not understand why Malek was asked or decided to adopt a very deep, almost hoarse/froggy voice that sounded so unnatural. Even though I can't remember seeing Malek in anything, this voice seemed so strange that it felt more an actory affectation than an authentic person.

Despite the somewhat disjointed manner and sometimes very slow pacing, Papillon probably has the best performance Hunnam has given. A man who seems more known for his body than his body of work, Hunnam's Henri is a man who at times appears worn down and almost at breaking. 

Granted, Papillon still seems to delight in showing Hunnam's chiseled physique and he can still come across as boring and emotionalless, but this is probably a much better performance than in such clunkers as King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.

The actual escape with the four men was actually well-done and suspenseful, so that is a plus. 

It's unfortunate then that so often the film goes into long stretches of tedium while jumping past things that might have livened things up.  For example, the escapees find themselves with an impending storm that causes one of them to die.  Just before the storm hits, we jump to a waking Papillon, as if their surviving this squall was of no interest to anyone.

Papillon, at least this version, feels like a bit of a slog to sit through, as if we were there for every single year of his sentence. At times bordering on riffing on other films (a few scenes and bits of dialogue, intentionally or not, reminded me of Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid), I think this remake won't be held with the same appreciation as the original.

Then again, anyone attempting to equal Steve McQueen in any of his roles is going to have a very hard time of it.

1906-1973

DECISION: D+

The French Connection (1971): A Review

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

The French Connection has so many positives in terms of story, performances and an iconic chase scene that we tend to forget that it is slightly dated and has a somewhat unpleasant main character, though I'd argue he's pushing more antihero than hero.

In Marseilles, drug kingpin Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) is setting up a a major heroin smuggling operation with fading television star Henri Devereaux (Frederic De Pasquale) as his dupe.  He'll get it through Customs by hiding the heroin in Devereaux's car, and has local dealer Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) as his fence.

This is unknown to Detectives Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy 'Cloudy' Russo (Roy Schieder).  They work Narcotics, but so far are just dealing with low-level dealers.  It isn't until one of Popeye's informants tells him of a major deal involving the French that Doyle stars diving into things.  Doyle and Russo see that Boca is living a high life for someone running a corner store, and that the hotel that he visits has a shady lawyer named Joel Weinstock (Harold Gary).  Putting the pieces together, Doyle and Russo push to investigate further.

This does not sit well with their higher-ups, Doyle having an unpopular reputation among the other members of the NYPD. In particular, Doyle once got a cop killed due to his 'hunches', something that still sets Doyle off.  Nevertheless, Doyle and Russo get what they want with the feds involvement too.

Charnier is becoming agitated by Boca's slow manner; while he manages to give Doyle the slip when the latter is following him, he does want this deal done quickly.  Boca is having some difficulty but soon the deal is agreed to.  Charnier agrees to have Doyle killed despite his belief that 'there will be others'.

The attempt on Doyle's life leads to a wild pursuit where Doyle chases the assassin attempting to flee on an elevated subway, endangering pedestrians and passengers alike.  The attempted killer is himself killed, and now it becomes a battle between Doyle and Charnier.

Doyle gets the car he is convinced is 'dirty', but the men he thinks are part of the deal end up as low-level car thieves in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The police tear the car apart but can find no drugs.  It looks like Doyle is wrong, until Russo questions the weight of the vehicle.  The slight discrepancy between the manufacturer's listed weight and the actual weight is enough for them to tear out the one part they didn't, where they find the pure heroin.

With that, it is only a matter of time before the police, fully aware of the French connection, let the deal go through, leading to a fight which leads to deaths and some arrests.

In a postscript, we find that Weinstock was indicted but the case was dismissed due to 'lack of evidence', Mrs. Boca got a suspended sentence, Deveareux four years for conspiracy, and Sal's brother who helped in this, a reduced sentence.

Charnier was not caught and is presumed in France, while Doyle and Russo were reassigned.

One of the most interesting and brilliant things in The French Connection is how the film shows the differences between the antagonists. Again and again we see the suave, elegant and perfectly cool Charnier matched against the volatile, slovenly Doyle.

The best sequence that shows their different manners is the chase between Charnier and Doyle.  Without making drama out of things, we see in their manner how they react to things.  We see both of them playing this cat-and-mouse game where each knows what the other wants, and director William Friedkin builds the tension by having them try to keep pace with each other's next move.

When they are at the subway station, one attempting to evade the other, the tension ramps up repeatedly until in a split second, the elegant Charnier's cane (a very symbol of his elevated status) pops out to allow him to evade the trigger-tempered Doyle, Charnier's arrogant goodbye wave putting the coda on the sequence.

It isn't until Doyle in the end has the upper hand, figuratively and literally, waving back at a surprised Charnier, that the man nicknamed 'Frog One' by Doyle shows the slightest bit of anger and surprise at being outwitted by this disheveled American cop.

As much as the chase scene between the car and the elevated train in The French Connection is lauded (correctly so), I think the pursuit between Charnier and Doyle is equally brilliant.  However, for many, the chase scene between the car and the train is the highlight, and it is so brilliantly filmed and edited.

It is not a surprise that both the director and the editor, Jerry Greenberg, won Oscars for their work.  The tension of the chase scene never flags, building not just on the streets where an obsessed Doyle pursues his attempted assassin, but on the train itself.

We see the assassin killing people on the train, and the tension continues when he takes the train hostage and the conductor dies of a heart attack, leaving the train to crash.

It feels natural and real, not staged or elaborate.  It's a credit to Friedkin and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman (also an Oscar-winner for the film) for keeping things grounded. 

There's a natural feel to The French Connection, almost documentary-like.  Part of it comes from Friedkin's work in documentary films, but it also comes from having a limited use of music.  Wherein other action films the music might be loud, here, it is both somber and spare.

There is an urban grittiness to The French Connection, of a world that is believable and flawed, just like its protagonist.  The French Connection is a showcase for Gene Hackman, who shows how he can change so smoothly.  We see him as almost avuncular with kids as Santa Claus, then shift into a foul-tempered, foul-mouthed cop.

We should not like Popeye Doyle: he is a mess personally and a bit of a racist.  However, we also see that being a cop is less job and more vocation, someone who will follow his own instincts no matter what.  His last scene where he comes upon the body of the federal agent he accidentally killed is surprising in that Doyle isn't moved by his death.

As far as he's concerned, the only unfortunate thing is that it wasn't 'Frog One' lying there.  That does not make him unfeeling or uncaring, just so focused on the task that other things fall by the wayside.

It is a brilliant performance by Hackman, who really digs into this role and makes it a complex character.

He is matched by Rey as the elegant, generally unruffled Charnier.  Curiously, he was cast in a case of mistaken identity, being cast over another actor who had appeared in a film with Rey.  Despite this odd set of circumstances, I think Rey is perfect in the role, his elegant, unruffled manner serving to show him as a strong antagonist.

Schieder had a smaller, less showy role, but made a good impression as the cooler, more rational partner of the volatile Doyle.

While The French Connection is dated in terms of look and manner, the film is still an extraordinary piece of film-making.  It hearkens back to a time when gritty was how one would see New York, which is no longer the decaying city it once was.  The language and violence might also make it a bit of a period piece, but we can see our lead as a flawed figure.

Intense, intelligent, with at least two excellent chase sequences and a methodology to both the criminals and the detectives, The French Connection excels on all fronts.

DECISION: A-

1972 Best Picture: The Godfather