Get Out!

The film is billed as horror/mystery and rightly so.  It’s sort of one of those cases where you have to wait for the other shoe to drop before you start sweating and developing a feeling of “wait, what? Oh hell no!”   From the get-go, if you have a significant other who invites you to meet the folks for the very first time and you have any apprehension about it, wait for that feeling to dissipate before you agree to go.  Also, do a thorough background check before getting inextricably involved with that significant other.  It may sound unromantic, and yes, it is, but these days you can’t be too careful.  That being said, the premise of this film would be a total spoiler should I give you more details than this.  Think with your head, not your heart.  I do want to commend all of the actors in this film, especially Allison Williams and Daniel Kaluuya as Rose and Chris, if I didn’t believe they were a couple, you would have lost me in the first 10 minutes.  That, my friends, is the kiss of death.  My recommendation would be to rent it, watch it during the day and not alone.  Rating:  3.75 stars.

3 Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

So many relationships, so little time.  The first thing I want to say is this is not Frances McDormand as Margie Gunderson Part Deux or even closely related to the film “Fargo”.  This is Mildred Hayes, divorced mother and gift shop owner in a small town in the heart of ‘murica, who lost her daughter some 7 months prior to an unsolved brutal rape/murder.  The inhabitants of this “quaint” little town have issues just like everybody else.  The community is extremely small and people don’t want to be bothered by somebody raising a red flag that the job the local police force is doing is insufficient.  At the heart of this film, is the determination of Mildred to find answers, the redemption of Dixon (a clearly bigoted deputy who lives with his even more clearly bigoted mama), and the Sheriff, whose name takes the blame for the complete lack of resolution of the case.  Regrets abound, along with revenge, as a top priority for several of the parties involved.  It’s not a peace, love and understanding message we’re given, but a great attempt is made and those caught in the cross-hairs are in for a big surprise.  So, on that happy note, I’ll just say, see the film, always kiss your kids goodnight (figuratively if you can’t do it physically), trust your gut, be kind—always, guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people, and go big or go home.  Rating:  4 stars 

Kingsman II - The Golden Circle

What do you do when your mentor has been offed by some crazy mofo, your new girlfriend wants to take you to meet the folks (and by the way, they’re royalty), and you have to save the world with nothing more than a bottle of bourbon?  You get on a plane and follow the clues. 

Eggsy is back, he’s engaged, and he’s stylin’, this time in an orange tuxedo.  There have been a lot of changes in this installment as we mourn the passing of Galahad only to welcome Eggsy as the new knight of the same name.  We have some new players, in this case, it’s award winning actress, Julianne Moore, who has portrayed a lot of off the wall characters, but none so “off” as Poppy.  This performance is akin to what happens when you put titian-haired Barbie on crack, give her a Martha Stewart personae that absolutely reeks of sick and twisted and set everything up in an Amazon rainforest version of Barbie’s dream-house/village.  It’s special.  Jaw-dropping surprises abound, both pleasant and everso not pleasant, but vital to the continuation of the Kingsman. 

I have to say that, should I ever need assistance of the super spy nature, I would hope there really is a version of Eggsy and Merlin I could call on.  That’s something that’s always intrigued me.  Are there really people out there in the world that do this for a living or is it just a testosterone fantasy that’s made its macho way to the printed page and now the silver screen?  How much do spies make?  Do they train every day like martial artists?  Is Ninja a real job title? I digress...fun, violent, sick, scary, surprising, all tied up with a big bow and a cheesy smile.  Rating:  One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer and a bite of a really rare burger (3.5 stars)   

Flashback to February 2011

I didn't get to post to Vidiot's Corner several years ago, so I'm hoping this isn't a repeat.  I was perusing some old Facebook posts and decided to add these to my blog.

Oscar Watch: Everything else except 127 Hours

22 February 2011 at 07:43

So I tried to update these on my Vidiot's Corner Website, but to no avail.  How frustrating.  I may go back to my email distribution iist or try Word Press as an option and just blog my reviews.  I was also trying to update my multimedia services on the Firefly Theatre Page.  Doh!  Hopefully this works.

Toy Story 3
It’s been a long time since I spent a morning at a movie preview with my niece and hundreds of children and their parents at a now defunct theater in SouthCenter.  That morning was a sneak peek at what has turned out to be an integral part of growing up for those kids.  It was also a new way of looking at animation and story development for this writer, sort of like the Star Wars for cartoons.  Everything got bumped up to a new level of expectation.  Well, let me tell you, you’d be a fool to miss this exciting, funny, and brilliant close to a story about friendship and family.  Andy has grown up and is going to college…his old toys are in a state of apprehension about what will become of them and several of the old “pals” have been donated or sold.  His Christmas puppy has turned into a dog that reminded me of a friend’s dachshund, Cleo, who got too overweight and needed a skateboard under her middle to get around.  Woody, Jessie, Bullet, Hamm, Slinky Dog, Rex, the Potato-heads, the Squeaky Aliens, and of course, Buzz are all in for an adventure that you won’t forget.  Barbie and Ken are 80’s kitsch to the max—dreamy.  Cinerama was the perfect venue for a first time viewing and after seeing it once, I’m ready to go again.  So much to take in, action, romance, tango dancing, dumpster diving, it was an infinitely satisfying way complete the Toys’ circle of life.  Rating 4 stars to infinity and beyond.    

Inception
I’ll see you in my dreams, or I hope not.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want anyone mucking around in my subconscious.  Dream invasion is the key here.  This dream team plans down to the nanosecond what they need to do, whether it’s to steal secrets (of the corporate variety) or in this case plant an idea which will result in a very profitable outcome for a Japanese businessman.  This is a “matrix-like” film, substitute Leonardo di Caprio for a combination of Keanu Reeves  and Laurence Fishburne, Ellen Page and Marion Cotillard for Jada Pinkett and Cari Ann Moss  and for Hugo Weaving, equally nasty subconscious thugs.  The story can be very confusing, but then again, so can dreams.  Definitely a film for special FX aficionados.  The wake-up music is ironic in that you hear a lot of Edith Piaf (a role made memorable by Ms. Cotillard).  It will definitely start the room talking once you’ve seen it the first time and it’s a film that makes you want to, no, need to see it again.  I’ve never been good at writing down what I dream and don’t recall if I dream in color or black and white…I know this was filmed in color, but were the dream sequences filmed in black and white, or did I just dream that?   Rating:  4 stars
   
The Black Swan
Natalie Portman is going to take the “Best Actress” award this year.  That’s not a good guess, it’s just a fact.  Her character (Nina) is a tour de force of weird stemming from what seems to be a clear cut case of schizophrenia.  We have no clue if she’s a victim of child abuse or just so mentally effed up and practicing to be the perfect little ballerina princess, that her efforts to hide her OCD and hallucinations are anything more than dreams…(I think the cast of Inception should have done an intervention in this film).  The music, dancing, supporting cast (Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, Wynona Ryder, and Vincent Cassel), because anyone other than Natalie is supporting, is superb.  It’s frightening and bouncy all at the same time to a soundtrack that I’m sure Tchaikovsky would have loved, besides the fact that a few of the selections are from Swan Lake.  This definitely didn’t lay an egg, but I don’t think I could watch it more than once.  Rating: 3.25 stars   

Winter's Bone
“Well somewhere in the black mining hills of Dakota lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon”…or so the song begins.  This takes place in the Ozarks of Missouri and concerns the life of a 17 year old girl who’s taking care of her family (a nearly comatose mother, and much younger brother and sister) because of the absence of her father who’s jumped bail and “gone away”.  Rees (Jennifer Lawrence) is left with the daunting task of locating her father against all odds in time to save the family from being kicked to the curb as her daddy decided to put the farm up as collateral.  In times past, her daddy’s business would have been making and selling ‘shine, that’s changed over the past 30 years and now it’s Crystal and the locals don’t cotton to anyone invading their privacy whether you’re the law or one of their own.  Rees is in a peck of trouble and has to endure the wrath of just about everybody she knows.  This is not a film for the squeamish, especially not if you’re a vegetarian and like cuddly little squirrels and Bambi.  John Hawkes and Jennifer Lawrence are every bit as deserving of their nominations as more well known actors.  When the world finally reaches a point where everyone has to fend for themselves, these are the people who’ll survive.  Rating:  3.75 stars

The Fighter
Moving farther east to the town of Lowell, Massachusetts, we meet two brothers, Dicky Eklund and Micky Ward.  Dicky taught his little brother everything he knew about fighting and then took a powder on his life, landing in prison and smoking crack, not exactly in that order.  What a lovely way to help someone to the top of their game.  Add to this, one extremely overbearing mother/manager, 7 or 8 sistahs, each one a chip off the old mom-block, and you’ve got the makin’s of the next welter-weight champion of the world.  Set in the ‘80s, Dicky and Micky are living the life…Dicky’s living the effed up life and Micky’s just trying to get his act together so his daughter can come stay with him.  Based on a true story, Christian Bale is Dicky…banty rooster thin with an attitude that goes for days and Mark Wahlberg is Micky…bustin’ a move in the ring and looking every bit the Calvin Klein underwear model when he was known as Marky Mark.  Amy Adams is Charlene, Micky’s girlfriend.  If you thought Micky was bad-ass, you ain’t seen nothing until you see her defend herself, both physically and verbally…she’s a pistol.  This happy family never made the cover of Life or McCalls magazine, but Micky’s victories are a part of history and the film captures the feel of the era.  Melissa Leo is over the top, but so is Micky’s mom, so she’s perfect.  Rating:  3 stahs

The Kid's Are Alright
Nic and Jules have two children, one each with a donor and a couple of years apart.  The oldest, Nic’s daughter Joni, is turning 18 and the youngest, Jules’ son Laser, is hoping that she’ll grant him a favor before she leaves for college…he wants to meet his donor dad.  Being underage, he can’t do that and nobody wants to tell their moms what they have planned.  Enter “Dad”, a successful restaurant owner in the greater L.A. area, womanizer, and all around dork.  Not what you call a great role model for helping your child focus on their future.  What ensues is trying to be mature adults in a situation that any married couple (same sex or otherwise) would find less than comfortable. Mark Ruffalo adds just the right amount of “Duf to Dufus”, Annette Bening and Juilanne Moore are Nic and Jules, the concerned parents and play well off of each other.  The kid’s really are alright here, but it’s the adults who have issues.  This is a dramedy, definitely R-rated and worth the watch.  Rating:  3 stars 
 
In addition to Best Picture nominations I’m including a couple of notable nominees.

Exit Through The Gift Shop
If you don’t watch another film from this year’s nominees, I beg of you to rent, borrow, steal, download, whatever you have to do and see this documentary.  In a nutshell this is the story of how a French man who’s obsessed with documenting life with a camcorder gets the tables turned on him when he stumbles on the fact that his cousin is a well known street artist named PacMan in Paris.  He’s exposed to the kamikaze way this art is produced and exhibited and in the process, introduced to the infamous Banksy.  He thinks he’s doing a film about Banksy, however, he’s really the main event and Banksy is making the film about him.  There isn’t one second of this extraordinary look at life after dark that didn’t make me want to get on a plane and see the work up close and personal.  Rhys Ifans is the narrator with input from Banksy, himself.  It’s going to be a very interesting evening if this film wins best documentary.  Banksy has never revealed his true identity and he’s not about to now, so watch the film, watch the extras, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.  Rating:  4 stenciled stars

How To Train Your Dragon 
Holy Odin, Dreamworks has hit the nail on the head this time with a wonderful story about a boy and his dragon.  Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is our reluctant hero, son of the Viking Chief, Stoick (Gerard Butler), and local inventive nerd.  He’s sort of an absent-minded professor type in the making who would like nothing more than to be left out of the mandatory dragon defense training requirements of his village.  Alas and alack, that’s impossible, because if he was left alone, there wouldn’t be a story.  This is sort of a mish mash of Avatar, The Black Stallion, Eragon, but much more “kid friendly” because it’s Disneyfied, as in dragons are a lot like cuddly aliens who make their home in Hawaii.  The local teenagers are as dorky as Hiccup, except for Astrid, who is the kick-ass Scandinavian version of Mulan.  That, in a way, is sort of strange, because she’s voiced by none other than “Ugly Betty Suarez” herself, America Ferrera.  There’s plenty of action, great animation with special effects.  The dialogue doesn’t suck and it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome and outlast the attention-span of most 5 to 10 year-olds.  My only gripe would be is that red-headed Vikings are from Scandinavia, so will someone please tell me why it’s impossible for people who produce these films to stick to the correct accent group?  Iffen yor naught goonna spak with a Norwegian accent or an “merican” one like the kids do in the film, then why screw with the minds of children who have yet to learn history, even if the story is myth and fantasy?  I can just hear some 3rd grader piping up to their teacher that the Vikings came from Glasgow and wore kilts and had funkier names than Ole, Sven, Gunnars, and Erik.  Uff da.  Rating:  2.98 stars   

Bring on the Oscars and let the party begin...I'm ready!

Coco

Dias de los Muertos translated is Day of the Dead, a time when we honor our ancestors who passed into the great beyond (and no, you don’t have to be Latino).  “Coco” is the story of one boy, Miguel, who, through a family misunderstanding several generations ago, is not allowed to play or sing any sort of music.  That, in itself, would make me not want to hang around on this side of the living realm.  It’s a magical, heart-rending story that makes you want to tell certain characters in the boy’s family to “get a life”.  Dias de los Muertos is not a sad celebration, and there’s the key; it’s a celebration.  There are songs that make you want to sing along Mariachi style, can I get an “ahhhhhhhhhh ha”, and others that are heart-breakingly sweet.  It’s amazing how an animated story can make you feel like it’s something that really happened.  It’s a mystery and when you figure it out, you want to hug this kid and tell him everything is going to work out fine, just don’t give up your faith, your dreams, and practice, practice, practice.  You never know, you could become famous.  I am totally in love with this film.  I’m rating this a field of marigolds, a sugar skull, a huge plate of tamales, and a one hairless slobbery dog (that’s a good thing, a very good thing) or in other words, quatro estrella.

Murder on The Orient Express

A bit before (1974) our heads were turned to outer space and the reign of the Force and the Arthurian culture of the Jedi, there was the first film version of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries. It starred greats of the silver screen taking a trip through the Swiss Alps to get back to Paris. It was so luxurious I don’t think anyone who hadn’t read the book beforehand would have doubted this was the absolute ultimate in traveling through Europe. Certainly not the quickest way to get from Istanbul to Paris, like say, taking a dirigible, but then again, that would have been a whole different story.  This version had its good points and not so good.

Agatha Christie mysteries are like Chinese puzzle boxes that you have to take apart in just the right manner to get to the “who done it” answer hidden deep inside. This story is no exception, but for the fact that some of the characters have been, how shall I put it, modified to satisfy a “political correctness” that didn’t really exist during this time period.  Knowing that and trying to get past it, so it wasn't a distraction, was a bit difficult for me. 

Kenneth Branagh both directed and starred as the world’s greatest detective and I applaud his efforts in trying to fill the shoes of Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov, who both lent their own uniqueness to previous portrayals of Monsieur Poirot and the use of his “little gray cells”. Kenneth is sufficiently OCD,almost a bit more so than as written, but nicely done. The cast is comparable to the ’74 cast and the basics are and have to be identical to the book otherwise you’re messing with perfection and that’s a sure-fire recipe for failure. Overall, I feel it will be a front-runner for hair and makeup and set-design awards.

I’m going to be nitpicky about one thing that I truly missed from the first film, and that was the music that you hear when the train is on its way. It’s iconic and identifies this film just as John Williams or Hans Zimmer, or any of the great composers have done in countless other classic films. It adds a dimension of opulence that’s lacking here. The closing credits, however, are nicely wrapped up by an original song delivered by Michelle Pfeiffer and a glimmer of what’s to come. Rating: 3 stars (Professor Plum in the Observatory with a Candlestick, or was that Miss Scarlett in the Library with a Wrench?, so difficult to decide nowadays).

Star Wars Episode VIII - The Last Jedi

Sometimes it takes me a while to warm up to a movie, if at all, but not in this instance. I’ve been following the Star Wars story since its inception and I can truly say that this was one of the best in the series. No Ewoks, Jar-Jar Binks, Clones…just a girl named Rey, a boy named Finn, another girl named Rose, a pair of cosmically Force-driven twins, and another boy with a gi-frickin’normous chip on his shoulders out to take over the galaxy. Oh boo-hoo, my daddy and mommy didn’t save me from evil in time so I’ll just pick-up my marbles and pledge my loyalty to some freaky power mad bald dude who does nothing all day except sit in a huge, very uncomfortable looking chair and plays mind tricks with people who could possibly turn on him like a rabid dog. Be careful what you wish for. Anyhow, we’re back at the end of The Force Awakens and finally, after waiting decades, the answer to what, where, why, and who is finally revealed. The Force lives in all of us, it’s just a matter of how we use and promote it. I don’t like it when somebody gives me spoilers, so I won’t divulge anything except to say, if you’re worried about hearing dialogue, watch the unenhanced version of the film, i.e., no 3D/4D/IMAX with super surround sens-o-vision , I’ve been told it’s too distracting and loud. I was as happy as a clam at my first viewing (oh yes, I will be watching it again) and felt the same thrill the second Star Wars Episode VIII started rolling on the screen, as I did in 1977 with a New Hope. God-speed Carrie Fisher. You ruled in that galaxy long ago and far away. Rating: You need to ask? 4 stars, of course.

Gary the Dog ... Space Gary (uncredited)