Ad Astra: A Review (Review #1335)

AD ASTRA

My late friend Fidel Gomez, Jr. sometimes got on my case whenever I would refer to a particular film as 'pretentious'. Perhaps if he still lived, he would concede that Ad Astra is indeed 'pretentious'. Mistaking moroseness for meditative, Ad Astra has the positives of a lush score and some extraordinary visuals that I figure on a large screen are breathtaking. However, the film as a whole wallows in its own self-importance.

Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) whispers and monologues of his own misery which he keeps in check under a cold, remote manner. The son of legendary astronaut Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), he is sent on a top-secret mission after "The Surge", a massive power surge/outage that has wrecked life on Earth. The military believes that "The Surge" was the result of the Lima Project, a search for extraterrestrial life that is stationed near Neptune.

Clifford McBride was the commander of the Lima Project, but has disappeared long ago. Fearing Clifford has turned into an intergalactic Colonel Kurtz, Roy is sent surreptitiously first to the Moon then to Mars before going in search of his father.

As he travels, he learns bits and pieces of the truth about both the Lima Project and Clifford from the men and women he encounters on the long journey. There's Clifford's frenemy Colonel Pruitt (Donald Sutherland) and Helen Lantos (Ruth Negga), whose parents died as a result of the Lima Project.

At the military's request Roy records a message to reach his father, but in adding a personal touch they decide he isn't up to the task. Nevertheless, he goes rogue and stows away on the spaceship sent to exterminate Clifford, inadvertently killing the crew. Finally reaching Neptune, he sees his father and now finds his physical and perhaps metaphysical search at an end.

In the spirit of positiveness I will congratulate Ad Astra (Latin for 'to the stars') for having some wonderful elements within it. Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography is extraordinary, filled with rich and vibrant colors. I figure that the Neptune sequence on a large or IMAX screen would leave the viewer fully immersed in this universe. Max Richter's score also was exceptional, even if oftentimes it felt as if I were listening to a Music From the Hearts of Space broadcast where one is waiting for Steven Hill to pop up. 

Visually, Ad Astra is arresting. Emotionally, it's as cold and chilly as deep space itself.

If there is one thing that I find quite irritating in films, its voiceover. Few films with voiceover work: Sunset Boulevard and Blade Runner come to mind. I think it is because more than a few films use voiceover to do the heavy lifting of story. A voiceover is sadly too often used to literally 'tell' versus 'show'. Worse, voiceover can hamper a film by locking in emotions that an actor should express in the performance itself.

That is already bad enough, but Ad Astra doubles down on that by having that voiceover by essentially whispering. I do not understand why so many filmmakers believe that whispering dialogue equals intense emotional insight. I'm suddenly reminded of The Tree of Life, another 'whispering dialogue means we are discussing deep things also starring Brad Pitt'.

I get that Pitt's Roy was a man who reined himself him emotionally but who had hidden torrents of emotion deeply buried underneath, but it does not explain why just about everyone behaved as though all this was so serious and important. I'm not sure a single character in Ad Astra encountered genuine human emotion, apart from perhaps Loren Dean as the insecure and frightened space commander Stanford.

As a side note, we hear in Pitt's monotone voiceover that "Stanford is frightened" when asked to go investigate a Mayday call before Roy volunteers to take his place. Why director/co-writer James Gray (writing with Ethan Gross) did not trust the actors to show such things in their performances versus having to literally tell us I don't know. I also don't know why Gray opted to make even action scenes like a Moon chase so quiet. Add to that how the film wants us to feel for someone's death when we barely met him, giving us only the trope of 'family picture' to make any kind of emotional connection when the film drowns in somberness. 

This kind of quietness pushes Ad Astra down. I don't trust these types of deliberately self-aware esoteric films, so ponderous and serious where no one appears to be human.

The performances were all quiet, so there was a sameness to them that made it hard to see individuals than people. To be fair in their brief scenes Sutherland and Negga did well, and Pitt gave a correct performance of someone emotionally tight and remote. However, did everyone else need to be that distant?

Ad Astra really is a curious blending of Apocalypse Now with some Planet of the Apes (at least in one sequence where things perked up) and a dash of Major Tom (that would be the Tommy Lee Jones character). After Roy accidentally causes the deaths of the space crew, we hear that the journey to Neptune will take "79 days, 4 hours".

That might have described Ad Astra's running time.

DECISION: C-

Cats (2019): A Review (Review #1334)

CATS

Cats has in its brief time as a theatrical release achieved an infamy as one of if not the worst film of 2019, a misfire of epic proportions. Having finally seen Cats the film, I can say it is not horrible.

It is, however, misguided, odd, bizarre, irrationally frenetic, and sometimes laughable, with only a future as the ultimate in furry porn.

Contrary to what has been written, Cats the musical has something akin to a plot even if based on the time I saw Cats on Broadway I would say it's more of a revue than a full-on musical. Essentially, a group of Jellicle cats 'audition' for the wise old cat Old Deuteronomy, who has the power to give one particular cat a whole new set of nine lives.

Each cat sings a song about him/herself with the other cats at the "Jellicle Ball" joining in. Only Grizabella the Glamour Cat sings not about herself per se but about her regrets in Memory, the show's breakout song (and I'd argue the only song from Cats anyone actually knows). In the end, Old Deuteronomy makes his choice and the chosen cat rises to the Heaviside Layer and a new life.

Cats the movie opted to put more of a structure by having all this seeing through the very wide-eyed wonder of Victoria (Francesca Hayward), abandoned on the London streets. Taken in by the other Jellicle cats, Victoria sees all these cats sing and dance songs about themselves. There's a malevolent force, however, in Macavity (Idris Elba), who wants to win the competition and has been spiriting away the competition.

Among the various types of cats are the cocky Rum Tum Tugger (Jason Derulo), the meek magical Mr. Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson), the fat cat Bustopher Jones (James Corden), the lazy showbiz cat Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson) and Gus the Theater Cat (Ian McKellen).

With Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench) watching, the various cats essentially make their case but Macavity will not wait. He abducts Old Deuteronomy with some help from his Cat Friday Bombalurina (Taylor Swift) and threatens her with drowning unless she awards him the prize, which she refuses. A last minute-save brings Old Deuteronomy back to the Ball and she makes her choice: Grizabella the Glamour Cat (Jennifer Hudson).

As mentioned, I saw Cats on Broadway and I didn't hate it. I liked it: I was entertained if a bit puzzled by it all. Some good songs and a fantastical premise that worked on the stage was good for a night's light entertainment. When I saw Cats, however, I did not think it would work as a feature length film, primarily because to me again it was more of a stage revue than a plot-driven musical.

Director Tom Hopper, who adapted the show with Lee Hall, opted to try and sort out or perhaps ram a plot into Cats, but I think that ended up making things more bizarre. While my memory of any actual plot within Cats is sketchy, I genuinely don't remember any dancing cockroaches in Cats.

Dear God, the Dancing Cockroaches (which come to think of it, sounds like a good band name). As if the small singing mice apparently abducted from Babe were not already oddball enough during Jennyanydots' number, you had a flat-out bonkers Busby Berkeley-type musical number involving cockroaches, some of which our tubby tabby munched on as they tap-danced across (and under) a kitchen table.

Jennyanydots: The Old Gumbie Cat sequence looks as if it came from a literal fever dream, something you would see when in the fit of a medical emergency. If memory serves correct, Lucille Ball once saw a group of roaches marching on her stomach to Seventy-Six Trombones, but at least her hallucinations were due to the medication given to her after suffering a stroke. The whole number looks insane, leaving the viewer either gasping in shock or on the floor in laughter.

Not that many other numbers looked sane or rational, and that isn't even the worst of it. Due to the revue-like structure of Cats, you really don't see why we have all these cats. Rum Tum Tugger does his bravado number and then essentially disappears. You have the same for Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat, who does his bit but who has no reason to be in the film before or after.

It's here that I think we can put down a major reason, apart from the Dancing Cockroaches or Babe-like mice, as to why Cats is such a disaster. Skimbleshanks has an elaborate dance number culminating in a tap-dancing montage. Leaving aside the illogic of cats with human hands and feet (obviously, we didn't get the print with the 'enhanced' yet Oscar-shortlisted Visual Effects), the cutting for this number was horrendous.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers knew that dance on film needed to be seen. Astaire would always insist on long shots to see the whole body move, and Rogers once bemoaned the number of close-ups in Staying Alive.  "These kids think they can dance with their FACES!" she I understand complained, meaning that the actual dance was sacrificed to see the dancers' reaction. Cats, similarly, has too much wild cutting to let us appreciate the mobility and dancing.

There are some moments where one can see some dancing, but even those are drowned in excessive production design and lights that take away from what should be elegant and moving moments.

In the Skimbleshanks number, we see close-ups of the tap-dancing feet and quick cuts of a group dance, but the focus on the elaborate numbers versus the number itself pushes the production down.

In terms of acting and singing, it's again a question of 'what were they thinking'? Only Davidson as Mr. Mistoffelees emerges from this fiasco unscathed, the closest thing to a legitimate performance. It helped that he was given something of a motivation: the once-formerly great magical cat now unsure and frightened of failure.

In her one number, I don't see how Swift is thought of as this musical genius, her generation's combination Ella Fitzgerald/George Gershwin, and while I don't think Beautiful Ghosts (the one new song she co-wrote with Lloyd Weber) is good, it was well-integrated into the film. Poor Elba did what he could but one isn't that scared of Macavity.

Again to be fair, McKellen was not bad but Dench's Old Deuteronomy was slightly more embarrassing than when as Queen Victoria she belted out I'm Called Little Buttercup only in Victoria & Abdul she was meant to be tottering. Corden hopefully will never live his cat-turn down and Hudson, all snot-nosed and bad Memory cover, at least has the benefit of not being on-screen long enough to hold it against her.

A long-running gag on the television show The Nanny was on how the male lead, a Broadway producer, forever was berated and berated himself for having turned down Cats only to see it become highly successful. If there were ever a The Nanny sequel, perhaps the running gag could be that Mr. Sheffield ended up producing the film version of Cats.

DECISION: F

Little Women (2019): A Review (Review #1333)

LITTLE WOMEN (2019)

This latest version of Little Women has some new elements within it that distinguish it from almost all others. First, it is the second adaptation to have a female director though the first to have that director also be the screenwriter (Greta Gerwig). Second, it is performed by actresses who would have more likely grown up with that female-directed version as 'their' version rather than the previous ones. Third, it is the first Little Women to have all of the all-American March sisters be played by non-Americans*. Fourth, this adaptation comes at a time when the role of women on and off the screen has come to the forefront. How can a text well over a hundred years old still work today?

Using a nonlinear structure that takes us from "present day" to seven years earlier and shifting hither and yon between, we see Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) already in New York as a struggling authoress. She does have some interaction with Professor Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel), but not much to speak of.

We float between the other sisters and their lives present and past. There's Amy (Florence Pugh), in Europe studying to be a painter under the watchful eye of the haughty Aunt March (Meryl Streep). While there, she entertains the wealthy Fred Vaughn (Dash Barber) but cannot shake the March family friend Theodore Laurence, generally known as Laurie (Timothee Chalamet). There is also Meg (Emma Watson), struggling to keep house and home when once she aspired to marry well only to marry for love. Finally, there's the memory of Beth (Eliza Scanlen), the shy March sister who eventually dies.

As we go from the past to the present to the future past, our four "little women" under the watchful eye of their beloved mother known as Marmee (Laura Dern), love and fight both among each other and with those around them as they strive to be themselves.

I think the most controversial element for this adaptation is Gerwig's decision to make it nonlinear, going from present to past and shifting back and forth. Perhaps someone who has never seen any version of Little Women will not find it as troubling or unnecessarily convoluted as I did, but for myself, there is more than just the loss of a straightforward narrative that left me cold.

By shifting our story back and forth, I think we lose what could be a stronger connection to the March sisters. It almost seemed as if Gerwig opted to film Part 2 of Little Women first, then move on to Part 1. It's hard for me to judge how successful the time shifts are given that I already knew the story, but by going back and forth we lost something. The sisters seem if not strangers at least not as close as perhaps they should be.

Take Beth for example. The sisters all rally to her side when she first gets scarlet fever, making her death all the more tragic for them all. Here, we shift from when she is dying to when she became sick. Gerwig made the deliberate choice of echoing scenes from both moments in the film, but in doing so she made the tragedy less impactful. Not that it wasn't impactful, but it was just less impactful.

One thing that did surprise me was in how Gerwig opted to make Little Women more about Amy than about Jo, almost to where we could have dropped our boisterous tomboy/aspiring writer altogether. Laurie may say he was in love with Jo, but as played by Chalamet he seemed pretty happy to jump from one March sister to another. While he spent more time with Amy in Europe than with Jo in America, he seemed oddly flirtatious with Meg at her debutante ball. When he drunkenly crashes a party, Amy reprimands him while mentioning he still has Jo's ring. Curiously, we see her give Laurie this 'talisman of love' later, and almost as an afterthought, with little to suggest he held this token dear to his heart.

Whether Gerwig wanted to focus more on Amy and Laurie to counterbalance the criticism of how their romance seems absurd in the book or not I cannot verify. What I can say is that for all the protests of love Laurie may make, he seemed oddly detached from Jo. When near the end of the film he proposes marriage, he doesn't seem all that enthusiastic about it. In fact, he seems almost bored with the idea, and he didn't look that much in love with Jo if at all.

Gerwig also appears to be aiming to make The Louisa May Alcott Story versus an adaptation of her most celebrated novel. At the end of the film, as Jo haggles with her editor on her book, "Little Women", she essentially says if she is going to marry off her main character against her wishes, she might as well make money off of it. At which point, she agrees to change the ending to have Jo run to catch Bhaer and kiss under the umbrella.

Was Gerwig attempting to be meta with Little Women? Was she shifting from the text itself to essentially winking at the audience and suggest the whole thing was just silly? It might explain why Bhaer is superfluous to this adaptation, perhaps more so than in the book. However, was he there because audiences expected him to be?

It's not a slam on Garrel, who while pretty is not as pretty as Chalamet and is more French than German. However, perhaps it would have been better to just go for it and change to text altogether to give Little Women the ending Alcott wanted: a single Jo. Chamalet was as mentioned extremely pretty but I didn't see Laurie as a wounded romantic or particularly close to the Marches. He was just there.

I would say that Pugh gave a fine performance as Amy, the one who knows she has to marry rich since as a woman she has no rights and little to no prospects for her own income. Her Amy could be nasty and arrogant but also touching and kind. I would also say that she is not a supporting role...she is a leading role. Pugh's story to my mind takes more precedence over Jo's, which to me is a radical departure.

Ronan's Jo is equally good: strong, perhaps a bit arrogant in being unable to take the slightest criticism, but equal to any man. Watson, to her credit, has improved her American accent though her scenes of romance with John Brook (James Norton) felt a bit overacted to me. Streep was pretty good as Aunt March, not as tyrannical as in the past but not as sensible as she thought she was. I don't have many memories of Scanlen, and despite what I have heard I was not won over by Dern's Marmee.

One scene did strike me as odd. She's handing out blankets to soldiers and their fathers when she observes, somewhat angrily, "I've spent my whole life ashamed of my country", to which an African-American woman also helping distribute blankets replies, "No offense, but I think you still should be". Given that her husband (Bob Odenkirk) is at the front lines of the Civil War, fighting to end slavery, it seems a very odd and random observation.

If one thing truly elevates Little Women, it is the production itself. Alexandre Desplat's score is pure perfection as are the costumes and sets.

Little Women works well enough, but my issue is in how Gerwig opted to structure her version to where I wondered whether she was telling Jo March's story or Louisa May Alcott's story. It certainly has fine performances and a beautiful score, and perhaps because unlike many viewers I have seen three versions that predate 1994's I see things others may not; on the whole though this for me is the weakest version. Note I did not say the worst or a terrible version, just not the one I would want for my daughters...and sons.

DECISION: B-

*While Saoirse Ronan was born in New York City and is American by birth, she is Irish by nationality. Watson and Pugh are British and Scanlen is Australian.

LITTLE WOMEN RETROSPECTIVE

Little Women Retrospective: An Introduction

Little Women: 1933

Little Women: 1949

Little Women: 1978

Little Women: 1994

Little Women Retrospective: The Conclusions

Spider-Man: Far From Home. A Review

SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME

I have been highly critical of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's take on Spider-Man. While I've thought well of Tom Holland as our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, I have been endlessly irritated by how he is essentially a blithering idiot, forever going on about "THIS REALLY OLD MOVIE" (i.e. any film released before his birth) or how for someone who started out as a teen whiz-kid he seems incapable of the most basic rational thought.

And I'm not even going to get into how he is so far from the traditional origins of beginning his life of crime-fighting thanks to his Uncle Ben's death.

While Avengers: Endgame is seen as the actual end of Phase Three of our world's longest and most expensive soap opera, Spider-Man: Far From Home is the actual end, or at least a coda on this season's finale, a bit of a holiday special. I know many love the comic hijinks and teen antics of our Queens gang, but by now I figure the MCU audiences are not particular on things like plot. They are perfectly content with Far From Home being essentially a mashup of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 with of all things The Incredibles.

The Blip (also known as The Snap, when half the world's population disappeared only to come back) has caused some issues among teenagers who are technically five years older but look exactly as they did before. In any case, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and his wacky friends are all going to Europe for a school trip.

Who knew Queens high schools had that much dough?

Going along for the trip are Peter's unrequited love MJ (Zendaya), his wacky best friend Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), his enemy Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) and two new (at least to me) figures: Tracy Flick-like Betty Brant (Angourie Rice) and Brad Davis (Remy Hii), a rival for MJ's affection. Our appropriately if perhaps illogical multicultural gang is under the watchful eyes of teachers Mr. Harrington (Martin Starr) and Mr. Dell (JB Smoove).

Peter, still mourning his mentor/father-figure Tony Stark's death, just wants to be a teen and not the new Tony Stark. While Stark's right-hand man Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) might want him to succeed Iron-Man, Peter would rather just go to Europe and declare his total love to the dour, sarcastic MJ. Even the presentation of a gift from the late Stark, a pair of glasses that connect Peter to artificial intelligence EDITH is something he struggles with.

Struggles with in both using and figuring out how to use it, as his first efforts resulted in a drone attack on his love rival that nearly killed them all.

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) insists Spider-Man help them, going so far as to manipulate the school's itinerary to suit his needs. After his group survived an attack by a water creature in Venice, Parker is recruited to help Quentin Beck, given the new name Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal). Beck claims to be from an alternate Earth who has come to our Earth to fight these Elementals before they destroy our world as they did his. After joining forces with Spider-Man (here named "Night Monkey" to avoid any connection to Peter Parker), Parker transfers control of EDITH to Mysterio.

With an hour to go, you know this is not the brightest of ideas.

We quickly find that Beck is in truth a bitter ex-employee of Stark Industries who has joined forces with other ex-employees for a master plan to masquerade as a hero by faking attacks. Now that he has EDITH, he can create the largest monster to fight and take on the new mantle of Ultimate Superhero.

With MJ having figured out Peter Parker is Spider-Man, it is now up to him along with his appropriately if illogical multicultural group to stop Mysterio.

For those interested, there is a scene where The Daily Bugle.Net's J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) outs Peter Parker as Spider-Man.

I have often said that I can "get" where a film is going or what it aims for yet not be on board with it. Spider-Man: Far From Home is one such film. I know it wants to be a mashup of teen comedy and Marvel Cinematic Universe canon, but I found so much of it so idiotic I wanted to throw the remote at the screen ten minutes into it. Maybe it's a generational thing, but why choose Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You for an In Memoriam montage over Sarah McLachlan's I Will Remember You or Angel or even Puff Daddy/Faith Evans I'll Be Missing You?

Maybe Celine Dion's satanic Trashtanic Lust Theme My Heart Will Go On would have been better, but now I digress.

I flat-out refuse to believe that in any universe that Betty and Ned would be in any kind of relationship. That's something out of Eurotrip, but that was meant to be idiotic. Nothing suggests that our Tracy Flick clone would want to be anywhere near someone as stupid as Ned, let alone be both erotically and emotionally enthralled with him. As played by Batalon and Rice, they didn't bother to try to make it believable, as if we all knew it was false, a joke. Maybe that's what MCU fanboys want but it really distresses me that people ask so little of their films.

Same goes for the love triangle of Peter, MJ and Brad. Why are Peter and Brad so besotted with someone who has no defining characteristic but her scowl? You knew what would happen when Brad walked in to see a pantless Peter and a hot European woman together. It is too lazy a setup. The film had nothing for Revolori to do. He doesn't convince anyone that he is a super Spider-Man fan or a Peter Parker hater. His performance, of what I can remember, is of him screaming more than Fay Wray in King Kong. His take on Flash is nowhere near interesting enough to inspire anyone to follow him on social media.

It's not entirely his fault: the screenplay gives him nothing to work with.

As a side note, I'm puzzled on the casting. I know Far From Home wants to be multicultural almost to the point of parody, and one can admire their efforts for diversity. However, why keep the character's original names? You cast a Filipino, a Guatemalan and a Chinese as Ned, Flash and Brad respectively and specifically to have diversity, so why not just change their names to reflect that? It just seems so peculiar to me to go out of your way to have a diverse cast only to pull back and keep the very Anglo/WASP names.

Gyllenhaal looked like he was having fun camping it up for all its worth as Mysterio, which is different from Jackson't totally bored take on Fury. I suppose after failing to attract the Academy's attention via psychological thriller (Nightcrawler), arthouse cinema in dual roles (Nocturnal Animals), physical transformation (Southpaw) and "inspirational biopic" (Stronger), he just wants to take the money and run. One doesn't need to be well-versed in Marvel mythos to know this Mysterio is a villain masquerading as a hero.

For better or worse, on seeing him in Venice, the first thing that came to mind was Edna Mode's declaration of "NO CAPES!" when he's fighting the Water Elemental. I genuinely thought Far From Home was taking inspiration from The Incredibles' Syndrome in the fake superhero story. I know the film is also a comedy, but was Mysterio/Syndrome supposed to be that silly?

Not that this bit of dialogue wasn't already silly. As the kids look on, someone says, "Who's that guy? (bringing back memories of Grease 2). "I don't know, but he's kicking that water's ass!", is the reply. I hope that exchange was meant to cause laughter.

I suppose it was nice to see actors from previous MCU films pop up, but unlike the fanboys I have never bothered to remember the smorgasbord of bit players.

Far From Home also echoes Spider-Man 2 in its theme of whether Peter Parker will be a superhero or a regular person. Even though I was not won over by Spider-Man 2, I do think it is better at tackling this theme. I think it is because Spider-Man 2 takes this more serious than the overtly jokey Far From Home. That joke extends to Holland's performance, where he is dead-set on convincing me that Peter Parker is a moron, forever afraid of talking to women, reacting to silly situations and being completely clueless on everything save mimicking Stark's technical abilities.

To be fair, at least they changed his "REALLY OLD MOVIE" bit to now misidentifying music. As "Mr. Hogan" (Peter stubbornly insists on addressing every adult as such) plays Back in Black, Peter perks up. "I love Led Zeppelin," he announces. Can't wait for him to go on about "THAT REALLY OLD SINGER, BIGGIE SMALLS" in Spider-Man: You Can't Go Home Again.

The more I watched Far From Home, the more I began to genuinely believe this film was made for four-year-olds.

I just don't care. I just don't care.

Next Marvel Cinematic Universe Film: Black Widow

DECISION: D-

Charlie's Angels (2019): A Review

CHARLIE'S ANGELS

I never saw the 2000 film adaptation of the Charlie's Angels television series, nor the 2003 sequel though I have seen a few episodes of the 1970's series. Now with this reboot, I am at a loss to understand why writer/director/producer/actress Elizabeth Banks is so thoroughly convinced that misandry is equivalent to female empowerment. Charlie's Angels is disorganized and slightly boring with no reason for being apart from telling the world how terrible men are.

Elena Houghlin (Naomi Scott) is an engineer at Brock Enterprises who has serious concerns about Calisto, a revolutionary electrical power system that can be weaponized to kill. She is overruled in presenting her concerns to CEO Alexander Brock (Sam Clafin) by her mansplaining sexist boss Peter Fleming (Nat Faxon).

In need of help, Elena is shepherded towards the Angels of the Townsend Agency, an international security agency with an all-female agent crew. A master assassin named Hodak (Jonathan Tucker) is assigned to assassinate Elena but she is rescued by two Angels: the wild Sabina (Kristen Stewart) and the more methodical Jane (Ella Balinska). Aided by "Bosley 342" (Banks), Elena finds herself something of an Angel herself as she now works with them to find Calisto prototypes and reprogram them to make them incapable of being used to cause strokes or heart attacks, the perfect assassination weapon.

There's evil afoot though, as there is a mole within the Townsend Agency. Could it be Bosley 342? Could it be John Bosley (Patrick Stewart), the original Bosley recently retired from the agency whose name became a rank in the organization? The trio travel the world from Istanbul to the south of France to stop Calisto and the evil men bent on destruction.

Elizabeth Banks is someone whose work I am not too familiar with. As such I can't say whether she is a good actress, a good writer or a good director based solely on one film. I can say that this effort is confused and at times nonsensical. As I kept watching, I was forever puzzled as to why Elena was essentially playing Angel when she had little to no training. Why they opted to throw someone as inexperienced as Elena into life and death situations seemed strange to me.

Granted, perhaps that was explained during the time I struggled to stay awake, but given that was when the Angels were fighting in a quarry I don't see how we ever got a reasonable explanation.

Moreover, Charlie's Angels seems to tie itself into needless knots. It's one thing to have Jacklyn Smith make a cameo appearance at the end, but why did Banks and company decide to tie Patrick Stewart's John Bosley into both the television and 2000/2003 film versions too via digitally-altered photographs? Why not just start fresh?

That curiosity is compounded by the bloat Charlie's Angels has. Take the character of Langston (Noah Centineo). He appears briefly in one scene as a scientist within Brock Enterprises who helps Jane escape when she, Sabina and Elena disguise their way into the corporate offices to find Calisto. We then see him as the traitor's prisoner, shocking Elena. However, there is not enough time to establish him as a character of interest. One could argue we should be concerned for Langston because his life is in danger, but to be fair Charlie's Angels could have picked any random person to use as a human shield.

In other words, Langston is superfluous to Charlie's Angels, so why would anyone bother to care if he and Jane start a relationship given they've had at most ten minutes together?

The twists Charlie's Angels wants to give us as to who the traitor is seems set on being less red herrings and more oddball. The film slogs its way into giving us a 'shocking' twist that isn't all that shocking and that again given the almost 'blink-and-you-miss-it' appearance almost a bit of a cheat.

This trio of Angels does not seem to have that 'sisterhood' it wants us to believe it has. They never really gel as a group, let alone as friends. Scott is the best of the lot, as her Elena was both relatable and even had moments of humor as she handled the situations she faced. Balinska is also quite good as Jane to where you wouldn't mind a film with just her as the sole lead. She does much better than the material, though she is given more to do.

Stewart's take on some kind of quippy wild-child is so forced that it is not believable. Her Sabina comes across as almost inept, more interested in rattling bad one-liners than in being a whip-smart secret agent. I keep getting told how Stewart is this exceptional actress (Actress of the Decade according to the Hollywood Critics Association). Charlie's Angels does not provide evidence that she is the Actress of the Month, let alone entire Decade.

It seems for a film that has women at the forefront it's the men who seem to be having the most fun. Stewart and Clafin are camping it up for all its worth as the original Bosley and simultaneously evil and dimwitted corporate executive. To be fair, Clafin would never make my Actor of the Decade shortlist, but he seemed to be having a wild time playing a vaguely-Sir Richard Branson-type billionaire. Stewart too appeared to having a hoot as the nefarious former Townsend Agency second in command.

I had mentioned how Charlie's Angels has a heart of misandry in it. Right from the get-go when we hear in voiceover how "women can do exactly the same thing men can", the film seems more interested in lecturing the viewer than in entertaining viewers of either gender. The idea that men dismiss women due to their sexism was already covered in of all things The Hustle, but that was a comedy...of sorts. We have a scene where Elena's evil boss is both dismissive of her intelligence (despite her being crucial to Calisto's creation) and "mansplaining" how she was wrong. There's a moment when a Brock security guard advises a disguised Elena to "smile more".

Banks doubled and tripled down on this view of men being perpetually at war with women, which she's free to do. However, why work so hard to tell potential audience members you're trying to bring in that they are horrible just by existing?

Charlie's Angels is not fun or insightful. A sequel, let alone a whole new franchise is doubtful, which is a shame for Scott and Balinska. Without the burdens of Stewart and Banks, perhaps we could see the rise of better Angels.

DECISION: F

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: A Review (Review #1330)

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has been appropriately quixotic as it went from conception to a limited release in the United States (one-night-only if I understand things correctly). The various starts and stops to Terry Gilliam's film were sometimes so oddball that the film threatened to become his own The Other Side of the Wind. Now however, after a nearly twenty year odyssey, we have at last the film itself.

It wasn't worth the wait.

Toby Grisoni (Adam Driver) is filming a commercial in Spain, using the literary character of Don Quixote as part of the campaign. Toby finds his life and career hampered in particular by "The Boss" (Stellan Skarsgard), who keeps pushing Toby. The Boss asks Toby to 'watch' his luscious wife Jacqui (Olga Kurylenko), which to Jacqui means having sex. The Boss accidentally also reintroduces Toby to a long-lost student film he made, "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote".

Seeing his old avant-garde black-and-white student film sparks memories of his youthful cinematic passion and of Angelica (Joana Ribeiro), the pretty waitress he cast as Dulcinea. Impulsively he rushes to "Los Suenos", the village where he shot his film to see about his cast of non-professionals.

It's here that he discovers Angelica has left for the big city of Madrid and turned into what his father calls "a whore". He also finds that the simple shoemaker he had cast as the perfect Quixote is now bonkers, believing him to be THE Don Quixote (Jonathan Pryce). Real name Javier, Quixote through a series of unfortunate events makes Toby his Sancho Panza, as they begin a bizarre odyssey that leads them back to Toby's abandoned commercial and ultimately his embrace as the new Man of La Mancha.

I thought that The Man Who Killed Don Quixote drew inspiration from Fellini's 8 & 1/2 as both revolve around directors who are struggling artistically. It may also draw from director and co-writer Terry Gilliam's own cinematic struggles (co-writing with Tony Grisoni). That struggle between artistic vision and commercial demands, between crafting art and making money, those themes are worth exploring.

In a curious way, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote may be a true portrait of someone Quixote-like as Gilliam, maker of esoteric wonders who fights to finance his unique vision. No truer yet symbolic figure in filmmaking is there that in Russian billionaire Alexi Miiskin (Jordi Molla), who takes advantage of Javier's insanity for his court's amusement. One can quibble on the fact that the film cast a Spaniard to play a Russian and an Englishman to play a Spaniard, but there it is.

As I kept watching The Man Who Killed Don Quixote though, my main thought was that while I "get" what they are going for I was never on board with it. Part of it is length: the film is a punishing 132 minutes, and you feel things starting to drag, particularly once Quixote and Toby arrive at the castle. You've got masked villains, heroes falling out of windows and few if any people concerned that an old man plunged to his death.

Part of it also is in moments where I asked if the film had an actual plot. Toby stumbling onto Angelica, now Alexi's mistress, while she bathes at a waterfall is too outlandish. Seeing Adam Driver as Toby break out into an Eddie Cantor impression as part of an effort to convince Quixote that he isn't "an enchanter" is almost sad.

I think the two lead performances were excellent. Pryce seems made to play a genuine Don Quixote, his sincerity and guileless as our noble man never flags or wavers. You believe Javier's initial hesitancy in flashbacks to playing Don Quixote and his total embrace that he is Don Quixote no matter how bonkers he is. You can laugh at him but also feel genuine warmth and protective towards him as he is made a fool.

Driver's Toby was in equal turns frustrated realist and youthful idealist, someone who could be lured by the luscious Jacqui while perpetually finding himself in oddball situations despite his best intentions. While I compliment Driver's surprisingly strong Spanish, I do question why for someone who speaks it well he at one point says, "Mi madre es en la basura", which translates as a bungled "My mother is in the trash".

It's bungled because "es" for "is" should mean 'being' not 'located'. If he means she is literally "in the trash" it would be "esta". Hopefully he doesn't mean to say "My mother IS trash", which would be "Mi madre es (la) basura". Well, to be fair what can be expected of people who think "Latinx" is a genuine word. Yet I digress.

It is not the performances themselves that are at fault. I think it is that the film can never decide to be either total flight of fancy or grounded in reality. This push-pull proves tiresome, and you feel by the end everyone is spinning wheels rather than moving forward. There's a scene where we see subtitles as Toby and Raul, Angelica's father, are speaking, then Toby announces "we don't need these" and swipes the subtitles away.

This pretty much sums up the struggle the film has between being fantasy and reality. Also, just a final Spanish note: the village's name of "Los Suenos" translates to "The Dreams", so there's that.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote could have been a great allegory on the creative process and the struggle between the artistic and the commercial. It just wandered too far out to fully embrace, but at least Gilliam got the film out of his system after more than a decade-plus, so that's something. 

DECISION: D+

Last Christmas: A Review

LAST CHRISTMAS

Welcome to Rick's Texan Reviews Annual Christmas Day Christmas Film review. Each December 25, I look at a Yuletide-themed film and this year we have Last Christmas.

I imagine that while most people know the chorus to Wham!'s Last Christmas, few know the entire song verbatim. The film Last Christmas is said to be 'inspired' by the music of the late George Michael, but it's more inspired by one song, which if memory serves correct is played in some way at least four times. Last Christmas is mercifully not terrible, but it is bad, continuing a run of poor holiday films that push themselves on audiences.

In 1999 Yugoslavia little Katrina sings like an angel, but in 2017 Croatian refugee Katrina or "Kate" (Emilia Clarke) is floundering. A drunken slut with vague ideas about being a singer, she jumps from one-night stand to one-night stand, crashing at whatever friend's couch that she hasn't managed to alienate. Kate works at a Christmas-themed shop open all year run by a woman calling herself "Santa" (Michelle Yeoh). Always dressed like an elf, Kate is openly miserable.

There is a reason for her misery: she had a heart condition requiring a transplant but she is thoroughly careless in how she manages her health and life. Kate also hates her mother Petra (screenwriter Emma Thompson) and resents her more successful older sister Marta (Lydia Leonard), though she's fond of her father Ivan (Boris Isakovic). And then she meets Tom (Henry Golding). He's fun, wacky and more important, interested in her. Interested enough to pursue our dour Kate, who eventually falls for his charms.

Despite herself, Kate starts growing as a person under Tom's mentorship. She stops drinking and picking up men. She becomes an unofficial matchmaker for Santa. She slips into volunteering at a homeless shelter, in particular by singing in front of it to raise money. After outing Marta as a lesbian, she starts making amends. She even starts reaching out to Petra and helps her become less reclusive and depressed despite the bigotry of Brexit.

Kate, however, still can't figure out why Tom disappears for days on end and is hard to find. It isn't until she goes back to his flat that she makes a shocking discovery: that 'last Christmas' it was Tom who literally gave her his heart when he was killed in a bicycle accident. With her ghostly romance over, Kate can now be a better person.

"Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you gave it away. This year, to save me from tears, I'll give to someone special". It's one thing to draw inspiration from George Michael's lyrics. It's another when you use them as the plot itself. Last Christmas, Tom gave Kate his heart but the very next day (or at least following surgery) she threw it away (with booze and boys). This year, to save her from tears, she'll give it to someone special: her family, her friends, her fellow humans.

Is it a strange thing that Last Christmas appears to be as if someone decided to make a romantic comedy out of A Beautiful Mind? At least John Nash had the "excuse" that he was schizophrenic, but was Kate just bonkers? Her entire romance was a delusion, but if that wasn't already bad enough one wonders exactly how did Kate know who Tom was. Do people routinely know the name and life-story of those whom they received organs from? I figure Thompson (cowriting with Bryony Kimmings) and director Paul Feig thought this would be a heartbreaking & touching twist, but it ends up making Kate look crazy.

Still, a little part of me does wish there had been a sex scene between Kate and Tom. Seeing it revisited after discovering Tom was already dead when he and Kate met would have been wild! How would Kate end up having sex with a figment of her imagination?

I'm sure everyone meant well, but Last Christmas is thoroughly unbalanced. The relationship between Santa and Kate is contradictory. At times Santa and Kate appear to be almost besties. At other times Santa appears to be unaware of Kate's name: more than once she refers to Kate as "Elf". The subplot of Santa's own romance seems from another film altogether, and moreover is so overtly overplayed as to make one wonder if they were aiming for farce.

It's a terrible disservice to Yeoh, who comes across as a combination Dragon Lady stereotype and idiot. Despite Kate's irresponsibility in not locking the shop which results in a robbery, Santa won't fire her. Again sometimes she's her BFF, sometimes she's her tyrannical boss.

I never saw Game of Thrones, but I did see Me Before You and am thoroughly puzzled as to why Emilia Clarke is constantly pushed at me as this 'bubbly' personality. To her credit Kate did grow as a character but Clarke's efforts to be all adorkable grew tiresome, and her disheveled manner wasn't that good either. Golding was pleasant enough, but why Tom had to do these oddball dance routines to woo Kate one can only guess at.

As a side note, and something that may be a bit too technical, I did wonder how Katrina, despite having come to Britain as at least a tween, has no Croatian accent. Her older sister equally sounds quite British, or is Marta her younger sister? Thompson most certainly had an accent, making her sound like The Bride of Dracula and a way to throw in some anti-Brexit sentiments.

Last Christmas has such a ludicrous twist that I did literally burst out laughing, but on the whole I softened a bit to it. It's not good and illogical, but I suppose as far as bad Christmas movies go, Last Christmas will serve until Next Christmas. 

DECISION: C-

2018 Christmas Film: Christmas with the Kranks

2017 Christmas Film: The Man Who Invented Christmas

2016 Christmas Film: Batman Returns

2015 Christmas Film: A Madea Christmas

2014 Christmas Film: Prancer

2013 Christmas Film: A Christmas Carol (1951)

2012 Christmas Film: Arthur Christmas