Thomas Newman – People Talking

Quick Thoughts – March Mega-Post – ‘Isle of Dogs’ ‘The Death of Stalin’ ‘Unsane’ ‘Red Sparrow’ ‘Thoroughbreds’

Isle of Dogs (2018)

Some people will probably call me crazy (in addition to “rich, white, and bored”) for giving this movie a perfect score, but, what can I say? I enjoyed it from end to end and will probably go see it again to pick out things I missed the first time (and maybe again after that).

I was a bit skeptical that Isle of Dogs would be worth the wait (the four years since The Grand Budapest Hotel is the longest gap between Wes Anderson features), but that notion was quickly put to bed. Every frame of the film is a rich feast for the eyes (which is logical given the time intensity of stop-motion animation), and every performance is a joy to listen to (regardless of your ability to understand all of them at all times).

It’s a simple enough story about a boy and his dog, and whatever influences it has are certainly worn on its sleeve, but somehow the movie still manages to feel original.

I’m on record as saying that I don’t get hyped up for the Oscars anymore, which is still true, but, I will say that if Isle of Dogs doesn’t win Best Animated Feature next year, it’ll be a travesty (although, if I’m being really honest, I’d like to see it as a Best Picture nominee, but then again I don’t really care about the Oscars).

It’s heartfelt, it’s funny, but, mostly, it’s pure movie magic if I’ve ever seen it.

Rating: ★★★★★

The Death of Stalin (2017)

As you might guess by its title, The Death of Stalin (based on the French graphic novel of the same name) is about…the death of Stalin, and the power struggle in the immediate aftermath. What you might not guess is that it’s not some hoity toity political drama, but rather every major player is portrayed to be petty and foolish, if not downright stupid.

This is all thanks to writer/director Armando Iannucci (don’t be fooled by the name, kids; he’s Scottish, like Peter Capaldi), whose work I’m vaguely familiar with. I’ve seen In the Loop and an episode or two of Veep, so I know his political-satire-as-dark-comedy style. You might not think it would work for Soviet Russia, but I thought it was fantastic.

One of the greater purposes of humor is that it allows us to process the unpalatable in a way that leaves us with our sanity intact, which is precisely what this film does. It uses satire and farcical comedy to demonstrate the extreme absurdity of the totalitarian regime of Stalin and his cohorts. Certain critics have found this clash to be in poor taste, or simply unfunny, but I think this film makes its point rather eloquently, and the performances from Steve Buscemi and Simon Russell Beale in particular help bolster it even more so.

Honestly, the only element I’m really taking points off for is some digital night shooting that took me out of the movie, and a few bits of humor didn’t quite work for me (that’ll happen in a comedy), but other than that, it’s hard to ask for more than what The Death of Stalin delivered.

Rating: ★★★★½

Unsane (2018)

Right off the bat, I’ll say this is a great example of a 21st Century Hitchcockian Thriller.

The story is horrifyingly plausible (credit to screenwriters Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer), the performances are believable (kudos to Claire Foy and Jay Pharaoh), and the movie fills you with an utter sense of dread that would make Brian De Palma proud.

There’s really just one problem. The film was shot on an iPhone.

I don’t know if this was done purely as an experiment, or strictly to keep production costs down, or what, but I can tell you that it doesn’t appear to be a thematic choice.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the whole movie is ruined because of this, I just think it would be to the movie’s benefit to look (and sound) like a movie, and there are moments when you are painfully aware that this was done on a phone and not something more substantial.

It’s a fine film, I’ll be happy to watch it again in the future, but it’s difficult for me to say it’s a must-see on the big screen, and I wish that wasn’t the case.

Rating: ★★★½

Red Sparrow (2018)

There’s a fairly popular notion regarding espionage these days that we don’t even need spies anymore because everything can be done by computer, and the response to this in media has largely been to equip fictional spies (both regular and super) with more and more technology, regardless of how cartoonish it seems.

The major reason why I enjoyed Red Sparrow so much is that it completely ignores this erroneous line of thinking, and brings spycraft back to the same old game it’s always been: psychology.

In short, Red Sparrow feels like a throwback in the best way, without feeling obsolete (definitely le Carré-esque, if you were wondering). Apparently some people have found some of the more “adult” elements to be rather shocking (which is kind of shocking to me because I didn’t think people were shocked by anything anymore, at least when it comes to movies), but I didn’t feel that it was exploitative relative to the story being told.

This film is a slow burner with some action, but no action for action’s sake, which may not be enough for some people, but I appreciated how grounded it was.

Not for everyone, but it’s not the trash you may have heard it is.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Thoroughbreds (2017)

Of all the movies in this post, this was probably the one I was the most let down by, and that’s not even saying it’s bad.

Thoroughbreds is a fine film on every level, but it’s tough for me to say there’s anything particularly special about it (which is kind of sad given that it’s Anton Yelchin’s final film performance, but what are you going to do?).

Of the two leads, I give the edge to Olivia Cooke in terms of her performance, and the story at least feels somewhat original, but in the end I’m left feeling like the movie is in the shallows rather than the deep end where it should be.

Worth seeing once, but far from a must-see.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Twofer Movie Review – ‘Suburbicon’ and ‘Thank You For Your Service’ – The War at Home

I guess at this point I’ve now officially, completely come full circle.

The genesis of my writings here came in the wake of seeing George Clooney’s The Monuments Men, which I went into wanting to love but in the end just couldn’t, but I realized that I had a lot to say about it. So, after a few months, I created this space to share my thoughts, and three-plus years later I’m still doing it.

So, thanks, George Clooney?

I’m certainly not going to thank him for Suburbicon.

Suburbicon

Directed by George Clooney
Written by Joel & Ethan Coen and George Clooney & Grant Heslov
Cast: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac, Noah Jupe, Jack Conley, Glenn Fleshler, Steve Monroe, Gary Basaraba, Ellen Crawford, Alex Hassell, Steven M. Porter, Pamela Dunlap, Robert Pierce, Vince Cefalu
Soundtrack: Alexandre Desplat

Perhaps someone else has already drawn this comparison, but I see George Clooney and Angelina Jolie as equivalents: fine leading actors who have made for less-than-stellar directors, each suffering from the same issues, namely tone and focus.

Suburbicon is not at all dissimilar from The Monuments Men (or Unbroken for Jolie) in that both are fantastic-looking period pieces with great casts giving quality but ultimately undirected performances, and both can’t figure out what kind of movie they want to be.

At the time, I gave Clooney some benefit of the doubt for Monuments Men because I figured maybe he had just taken on too much as the writer, director, and star. For Suburbicon, however, he has no such cover, because he’s not in the film, so I’m left to conclude that he simply is who he is as a filmmaker. In the case of both movies, they could have been great in the hands of different directors; specifically, Steven Soderbergh for Monuments Men, and the Coen Brothers for Suburbicon (who had some role in the script for both this film, and, again, Unbroken).

Regardless, Suburbicon is, in a word, unfulfilling. It’s a satire with no punch, a dark comedy with no laughs, and a MacGuffin of No MacGuffin (which you can do if you’re the Coen Brothers, but Clooney is no Coen, as much as I’m sure he’d like to be).

Even worse though, it’s distasteful, as one of the through lines of the film is the introduction of Suburbicon’s first black family, the Mayers, whose arrival is greeted with shock, outrage, and, eventually, violence (all of which is a barely-veiled reference to the real-life William and Daisy Meyers, the first black couple in Levittown, PA, whose arrival was met with similar unrest). If this was actually worked into the plot somehow, or if it was more than just the two children who had interaction, I probably would feel differently about it, but as it is it’s just kind of in the background, which feels plain wrong (not to mention the timing relative to current events is not great).

However, I will mention one silver lining on this thundercloud of Suburbicon doom, and that is Oscar Isaac. His screen-time is all too brief, but his performance is fantastic, and his character is about the only one with any explicit motivation, so, kudos to him.

In the end though, Suburbicon as a whole is a failure, and I can’t in good conscience recommend it.

Sorry, George.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Thank You For Your Service

Written and Directed by Jason Hall
Based on the book by David Finkel
Cast: Miles Teller, Haley Bennett, Joe Cole, Amy Schumer, Beulah Koale, Scott Haze, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Kate Lyn Sheil, Erin Darke, Kerry Cahill, Omar J. Dorsey, Brad Beyer, Allison King, Jayson Warner Smith, Tony Winters
Soundtrack: Thomas Newman

Another week, another based-on-a-true-story movie starring Miles Teller (he’s really carved out a niche there, hasn’t he?).

This is a hard movie for me to judge due to the subject matter. I am for sure not a veteran, let alone a combat veteran of America’s most recent armed conflicts, so I understand that my opinion in this case carries less weight, and I’m always curious to see what consensus the military community comes to on this kind of film, but in the meantime, I just know what my eyes and ears tell me.

Thank You For Your Service is the story of a few soldiers attempting to adjust to life back home after returning from a nearly year-long deployment in Iraq, and is the feature debut of writer/director Jason Hall, who previously wrote the screenplay for American Sniper.

Right off the bat, I’ll say that I found American Sniper to be much more impactful, probably because Clint Eastwood is an infinitely more experienced filmmaker (not to mention he had a bigger budget and more action-driven material to work with). Thank You For Your Service isn’t terrible, it’s definitely better than a movie-of-the-week production, but I’m reluctant to call it exceptional.

I haven’t read the book it’s adapted from, but I have a feeling if I did read it I’d often be asking, “Why did they put X in and not Y?” I’m not unsympathetic; I know it’s tough to put everything you want into a film, it’s a condensed medium, but there was more I wanted to see once the movie ended that I felt should have been included, so that’s one strike.

Also, the core cast is fine (again, not great, but acceptable), but there were a few minor characters whose scenes took me out of the movie. I get it, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but if it’s in a movie, it needs to be believable for the audience (see: verisimilitude), so that’s another strike.

Ultimately, while I feel it could have brought more to the table, Thank You For Your Service just barely gets on base because I think movies like this are important. In an era where the gap between civilian and military has never been wider, we need films and other media like this to help understand and develop some empathy for what it really means when we send our troops into harm’s way, and the physical, emotional, and mental toll it takes on them.

Thank You For Your Service is far from perfect, but at the very least it’s a step in the right direction.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Quick Thoughts – August Round-Up

Across 110th Street (1972)

Anyone who’s seen Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown is familiar with this title, as the Bobby Womack single of the same name (which appears on the soundtrack album but not in the actual movie?) plays at both the beginning and end of that film.

It gets lumped in with the Blaxploitation genre, but after seeing it, it’s clear that Across 110th Street doesn’t belong there. For one thing, the tone is too serious (there’s nothing really tongue-in-cheek about it), and there’s no strong, Black protagonist, because there’s no protagonist of any kind (we’ll come back to that).

Let’s back up for a second. Across 100th Street begins with the violent theft of a large sum of Italian mob money by three Black robbers. From there, it’s a race against time between the mobsters and the cops to find out who did it; the cops wanting justice for their gunned-down brethren, and the mob wanting to set an example to those who would try to steal from them.

This is where things get problematic for me, because the movie constantly cuts around between the three concerned parties (thieves, mobsters, cops), which is fine in theory, but in practice it doesn’t really allow you to connect with any character in particular, good, bad, or otherwise, and thus you never really connect with the movie as a whole.

This is not to say Across 110th Street is terrible. As well as having some entertaining moments, the movie addresses serious issues in a mature fashion, which is admirable. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so cold and flat from a stylistic standpoint. It’s one thing to go that route for a based-on-a-true-story movie (like Tora! Tora! Tora!), or a this-is-what-could-happen movie (like Contagion), but for a fictional police procedural I don’t think it’s the best idea.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

eXistenZ (1999)

If you made a cocktail out of Videodrome, The Matrix, and Inception, you’d have eXistenZ.

I was a bit nervous about seeing this one, given David Cronenberg’s infamy for gross-out material, but eXistenZ is surprisingly measured in the body horror department (even the “Chinese Restaurant” scene didn’t really bother me, although whether or not a lot of this stuff upsets you comes down to individual tastes and fears).

The movie takes a hard look at the concept of virtual reality, and, while it may not be an action movie, it feels appropriately dream-like (without question one of the movie’s strongest aspects). There’s also some commentary on videogames which gamers past and present will understand and appreciate.

Performance-wise, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law put in solid shifts, but I think I find the supporting roles more interesting (Ian Holm and definitely Willem Dafoe in particular).

Overall, eXistenZ may feel somewhat dated, give that it’s a late-90s vision of the future, but the way it questions our ability to unplug from the machine is as relevant now as ever. Kudos to David Cronenberg for that.

Rating: ★★★½

Red Mob aka Chtoby vyzhit (1993)

Information on this movie is sketchy at best, but if you understand Russian, you can enjoy the whole film on YouTube.

The boys at Vinegar Syndrome are putting together a Blu-ray release of Red Mob and I can’t wait for it to go on sale. It’s not on the same level of hidden gem as, say, Ninja Busters, but it is the right mix of incomprehensible and funny-bad that makes for a “magnum opus” of low-budget cinema (not to mention lots of guns and explosions).

I’m not going to bother to explain the plot, given that it took me until about forty minutes into the film to figure out who everyone was and what was going on, but I can tell you that it involves the Russian Mafia (obviously), weapons smuggling, former Soviet soldiers, kidnapping, and, if you can hold out til the end, some of the best helicopter flying I’ve ever seen committed to film.

One thing I know for sure about Red Mob is that it was shot in the former Soviet Union, maybe a couple of years after the Berlin Wall came down, and it makes use of a fairly wide variety of locations. The only one I recognized outright is what I assume to be Moscow, but I’m guessing they also filmed quite a bit in one or more of the Central Asian states.

Anyway, like I said, I can’t wait for the Blu-ray release. Definitely a bonkers kind of movie to be enjoyed with a group of friends.

Rating: ★★★½

(Update 05/26/17 – The Blu-ray is finally on sale: https://vinegarsyndrome.com/shop/red-mob-ltd/)

The Lost Boys (1987)

Before True Blood or Twilight or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there was The Lost Boys.

I can’t say with absolute certainty if it’s the first ever presentation of contemporary teenage vampires, but it seems to get the most credit as such. Regardless, it’s years ahead of its time from that standpoint

And yet, it’s also very much of its own time, not just in terms of music and fashion and all that (not to mention the first ever pairing of “The Two Coreys”), but because, for whatever reason, the 1980s were the heyday of the horror comedy (Gremlins and Ghost Busters come to mind), although there has been something of a resurgence of such films in the 2000s, but we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys.

He takes a lot of crap for Batman & Robin, which is fair (at least he owns up to it and doesn’t point fingers elsewhere), but I disagree with the popular notion that Joel Schumacher is a “bad director.” In addition to Lost Boys, he’s also directed Falling Down and the very much underrated 8MM. as well as other successful projects, but again, we’re not talking about those; we’re talking about The Lost Boys here.

The movie is a fairly classic type of story: a family moves to a new place and discovers things are not all as they seem But, in addition, the look of the film still holds up pretty well (I appreciate how they handled “flying” on a budget), there’s some great set design, the cast is pretty solid all around, and, most importantly, the tone is such that you can seamlessly move between horror and comedy.

If you’ve never seen it, especially with Halloween season coming up, I definitely recommend this stylish flick.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Movie Review – ‘SPECTRE’ – Tell Me Something I Don’t Know

Directed by Sam Mendes
Written by John Logan and Neal Purvis & Robert Wade (story and screenplay), Jez Butterworth (screenplay)
Cast: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, David Bautista, Monica Bellucci, Ralph Fiennes, Simon Lenagan
Soundtrack: Thomas Newman

As I said in my review of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., it’s been a great year for espionage-action films. We’ve had the aforementioned U.N.C.L.E., we’ve had another wonderful installment of Mission: Impossible, and we started off the year in grand fashion with Kingsman.

But, let’s be real here. SPECTRE was always slated to be the crown jewel for 2015.

Expectations have been sky high, and rightfully so. You’ve got the same critically-acclaimed director from Skyfall (Sam Mendes is the first consecutive Bond director since John Glen in the 1980s), the same writing team from Skyfall (Logan, Purvis & Wade, plus Jez Butterworth, who co-wrote the screenplay for Edge of Tomorrow), a cinematographer and an editor who know how to handle big, beautiful movies (Hoyte Van Hoytema and Lee Smith shot and edited Interstellar, respectively), plus, you’ve got the key cast back (Craig, Whishaw, Harris, and Fiennes), and you’ve got Christoph Waltz, who played one of the top two villains of the previous decade (much like Javier Bardem), as the bad guy in this movie.

AND, if that all wasn’t enough, this is the first official (that is, Eon-produced) 007 movie to use the SPECTRE organization since Diamonds Are Forever in 1971.

So, what happened? Does SPECTRE deliver? Or is it crushed under the weight of so much expectation?

Well, as a Bond movie fan who’s seen every single last film (you can read my documentation on the subject here, here, and here), I have to say, the result is a bit muddled, like a dirty martini.

To be sure, there are many wonderful moments in SPECTRE, but the movie as a whole is a bit long and a bit overly serious, making for an experience I find troublingly hard to recommend outright.

Not only that, but I found the story frustratingly predicable, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m such a James Bond fan, or if the movie just generally telegraphs its punches to anyone watching, or perhaps a little of both, but when a movie like this doesn’t have anything to surprise you with, it dulls the experience considerably.

The main strength of SPECTRE is, without question, the visuals. There are many beautiful establishing shots of both cities and natural landscapes, there are some wonderful-looking explosions, and we know who’s punching who in each action scene. The pre-credits sequence also features some great cinematography, with some nice long shots that track all around.

Performance-wise, love him or hate him, Daniel Craig is still doing his 007 thing, and Christoph Waltz, as we know, is a wonderful villain. I can’t say I was truly impressed by anyone else though, but I venture to guess that has as much to do with the script as anything else.

If it wasn’t obvious already, the story and screenplay are the biggest weaknesses of this good-looking (though not as beautiful as Skyfall) film. There’s not too much I can say without getting into spoiler territory, but let’s just say some elements compare to Star Trek: Into Darkness, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. That’s not to say there aren’t some brilliantly quotable lines, but you have to wade through so much other stuff to get to them that I began to question if it was worth it. Frankly, for a movie as long as SPECTRE is, and given that it does tie in the three previous Craig films, I didn’t get as much closure about certain things as I would have hoped from an overall story perspective, and that’s disappointing.

Also, I didn’t like how many of the characters were handled, as if the writers felt compelled to give them something to do even though it’s unprecedented for them to be doing anything of the kind. If you see the movie, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

As I’ve said before, James Bond movies are meant to be solid entertainment, and if they veer too much away from that core, either too campy or too serious, things start to break down. If I was going to compare SPECTRE to another film in the franchise, it would have to be The World is Not Enough: nice to look at, but leaves me feeling a bit empty inside. Perhaps I’ve been conditioned by the other spy action movies of this year to expect that such films should be fun experiences, but I stand by my statement nonetheless.

And, you know what else? I didn’t like the main titles sequence at all, either visually or the song.

The ultimate question is, of course, is SPECTRE worth it? I’d say yes, but don’t feel self-conscious about seeing it at a discount price. And, given how long it both is and feels, make sure you put a premium on comfort.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

P.S.
I’m sure some people will comment that Monica Bellucci is too old, but she’s still fine by me.