Dave Franco, now the preeminent Franco of the Franco brothers, following James’s disgrace in the public forum of shame, has now taken to directing. And, like so many actors out there, he proves himself to be a perfectly decent director, which makes you wonder about just how difficult the directing really is. I mean, how many other industries out there would put an untrained nonprofessional in charge? Just movies and politics, right?
Mind you, Franco co-wrote, produce and directed this one, also doing the tricky business of directing his own wife, so yeah...good going. OK, so The Rental… It was supposed to be a perfect getaway. Two couples, two brothers and their ladyloves, one car, one cute small dog, one giant luxury rental. But no, things never work out that way, do they? Or maybe they do, but it’s so uninteresting that no one would make a movie about it. This vacay goes to sh*t pretty quickly. Too many attitudes, too many emotional undercurrents. Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary’s first spouse is the older responsible brother with classic good looks, good job, good wife – played by Franco’s own good wife, Alison Brie. This stud’s baby bro is Jeremy Allen White, basically resuming his role of Shameless’ Lip as a strutting short muscly dude, a college dropout with attitudes for miles and anger management situation. The baby bro is currently being reformed by a love of a good woman who is conveniently enough his older brother’s business partner. Those two have an unusually close relationship. And if we learn anything from the movies, it’s that attractive straight men and women cannot just be friends. There’s also a dude who manages the rental, uncouth by city standards and thus immediately suspected and accused of racism, among other things. One thing leads to another and soon enough there are secrets to hide and then they find the cameras. Cameras that presumably know all their secrets. From there on, the situation unravels into a worst-case scenario with a concomitant body count. And here you go, lesson learned. Don’t trust anyone. Behave. And party responsibly. All in all, quite fun and as short as it ought to be. Nicely done, young Franco, nicely done.
0 Comments
Welcome to the Quiet Place. Again. The dumbest good scary movie out there. Possibly.
Quiet Place one had logistical snafus and the sequel just goes with it. Krasinski, who cameos here but was the lead of the first movie, and also is the writer/director of both, to his credit, does a very good job. The movie looks good, it scares good. The acting’s great and so is the atmosphere. There’s just a small thing about…how incredibly stupid the entire thing is. So please, bear with me as I go through it play by play. And, though this ought to go without saying, if you haven’t seen the movie, maybe don’t read the play by play review of it first. Ok, you’ve been warned. Now let’s dive into this…and yes, that’s thematical for the movie will feature diving. Ready? Ok. Quiet Place is a movie of an alien apocalypse. The aliens hunt by sound so everyone’s gotta stay really quiet. The family of protagonists in the movie has faired better than most because their daughter is deaf and so they all know how to communicate using ASL. So far so good. Now let the stupid roll in. At the beginning on the first movie, the family comprises two adults and three kids. As all -American as apple pie aside from the fact that apples actually hail from Kazakhstan. AND the wife is pregnant. Yep. During the apocalypse, during the freaking QUIET apocalypse, these two idiots just couldn’t resist each other’s charm or use protection, and so they are going to do the loudest stupidest thing possible and have a baby. DON’T have babies during apocalypse. Quiet or otherwise. Avoid it at all costs. Go medieval if you have to. Just don’t have babies. It’s quite literally the worst time to have babies. There will be no formula, no diapers. The second your baby does that most natural baby thing to do and cry, the aliens will come and eat you. And you will waste all the energy you might have spent protecting your family which has some chances of survival on the baby. Which stands almost zero chance of survival. Think of the greater good. Or just, you know, think… Movie one kills off the youngest kid straight away and the Dad in the end. Movie two has just the wife with a newborn and two young kids. Chances of survival ought to be nil and yet… They walk. Barefoot. Why barefoot? Why risk a permanent disabling injury? There are so many ways to walk quietly while shod. Wrap up your feet. Wear thick socks. Rubber soles shoes. Mocassions. Slippers. Something. But no. They go barefoot and apparently that fine, from slow to fast. Until they aren’t, but they are saved by their dad’s former bestie, who is actually smart about things. The only survivor of his family, he isn’t given to heroic deeds or courageous grand gestures. But he is smart enough to stay in a well-insulated for sound subterranean bunker. It even has vault-like safes to hide in for a short time. Those things lock from the outside so to prevent that a towel is tied around the locking mechanism and each time you get in, you have to remember to put the towel up. Ok, so maybe he isn’t that smart. Because why wouldn’t you just disable the locking mechanism or permanently wrap a towel around it. Why rely on having to remember to do it each and every time under duress and risk get locked in? But maybe he is smart…because he tells them they can’t stay. But then Emily Blunt shows his the baby and bats her baby blues into a begging face and he’s all like, “oh, fine.” Not so smart again. Because yeah, sure, he wasn’t gonna save her and two reasonable age kids, but what he is going to do is risk his life for a baby, a useless and dangerously loud baby who has pretty much zero chance of survival in this ugly new world. But then the daughter of the family figures out how to save everyone. They receive a transmission of Beyond the Sea on the radio and everyone’s all like…oh song, and she’s all like, no it’s a clue, you idiots. And she figures out there are people beyond the sea transmitting it. Suppositionary? Sure. But she goes there. And then she sets off on her own to find them. Because she possesses the power. The power we find out about in movie one – her hearing aid’s static noise amplified over the radio drives the aliens crazy. That’s it, mind you, one hearing aid, one girl against the world, but ok…go with it. She doesn’t stand a chance of course, because she is deaf and alone. But Emily Blunt once again uses her best pleading and begging skills and manipulates the poor man who already saved her and her kids into going after her daughter. This would have been something she’d be able to do herself, but she had to have a freaking baby. Idiot. A baby her oldest son almost dies babysitting. Ok, so the daughter gets a last minute save from the reluctantly heroic guy and they get to the coast and find a boat and fight with some scruffy weirdly burned locals and then boat over to an island. Because, lo and behold, though these aliens are just about perfect killing machines, they cannot swim. What is it with aliens and water? Shyamalan’s Signs, anyone? Ok, moving on. The island is idyllic. And everyone’s all happy. And agreeable to helping the girl transmit the signal. Which doesn’t kill the aliens, mind you, but it stupefies them enough to get a clean shot through the noggin – the only way to kill them. And then it turns out one of the aliens somehow boated over, following out protagonists, and slaughters tons of the island population until the transmission goes…screeeech. And back in the bunker, Emily Blunt’s oldest boy picks up the transmission on his radio and kills an alien with it (it and a gun) too. Yes, the kids are total kickass killers now. The kids are the future. Kids of a certain age, Emily Blunt, not the babies. Don’t have babies in the apocalypse. So yeah, now the future of the entire remaining population depends on having enough guns and the ability to receive a signal from a single hearing aid. Now the most auspicious of scenarios, but like I said, this isn’t a smart movie. It’s fun. But it’s the kind of thing that makes you want to yell at the TV, “No stupid, don’t do that.” I bet there’ll be a third movie too. I’d watch it. Make fun of it all the way through, but still. Not quite a ringing endorsement sure, but there it is. Michael Myers is the most American of cinematic monsters. He might not have started out that way, but that’s what he is now. It’s part of his appeal and part of the explanation why, unlike so many movie slashers, he managed to persevere for four plus decades.
Just think about it…what is more American than a brutal unstoppable force, a lethal penchant for baseless violence for the sake of violence? Oh, and in case you disagree, do read the latest crime statistics, watch some news, you know, get a clue…it pays to stay informed. In Michael Myers you have a killer who kills because he can. Because he is large enough and strong enough and has nothing by the way of moral compass. There is no message behind his killings, no meaning, no reason. It is the scariest thing about him. Well, that and the fact that he cannot be stopped. No matter what, apparently. As sequel after unnecessary sequel have proven so amply. This movie picks up immediately where its predecessor leaves off, taking the audience back to one fateful night in 2018 when Laurie Strode and her two successive generations of female descendants thought they finally got rid of Michael once and for all, but trapping him and setting him on fire. Well, they did scorch the mask, but you know…you can’t kill evil. Something Ms. Strode should have really learned by now. And so, they are off to the races again, with Michael stomping around their small quintessential American town slaughtering people indiscriminately and a few good citizens i.e. villagers with pitchforks (baseball bats/guns/etc.) are gathering determined to stop him. You can even find some sociopolitical commentary in this…this well leaning neighborhood policing posse getting out of control, foaming at the mouth with murderous rage of their own. Question is, do you want to? Slasher flicks aren’t exactly known for their political commentary. Without it, though, there’s just gore, guts, blood, and tons of brutal semi-creative ways of killing and dismembering. Which is…well, it’s pretty thin, really. It might satisfy some basic viewing urges and/or provide some much-needed catharsis after reading/watching the news but personifying evil into one man, but that’s about it. There isn’t a plot per se or twists, it isn’t smart or clever or original. How can it be original? It’s the twelfth freaking installment in the series. The writing…well, it was written by three people, including incongruously enough Danny McBride (he also did the one before it), and it comes across like it was. Very uneven writing with random tangential soliloquies narrated over visceral brutal murder scenes as the characters contemplate the nature of Michael Myers. How much of a nature there is to contemplate is ultimately up to the audience. You can see what you want to see in Myers, he’s designed that way, even his mask is a blank canvas. When Michael gazes into the mirror in his sister’s old room, you can only speculate on what he’s seeing (and the movie characters do). He could be soulfully gazing into the abyss that borne him, he could be dreamily looking into the past or he could be admiring his own reflection. He could also be staring out into the nothingness. He doesn’t need a reason to be what he is. He doesn’t require it of himself. His actions are justified by a pure mindless drive to indulge in his worst tendencies. He couldn’t be more of a sociopolitical commentary if he tried. Not that he’ll ever find the time, what with all the killing he has to do. And that ending…probably the most honest of Michael Myers’ endings in a long time. Doing away with any pretense whatsoever. The winner takes it all, baby. And this one…well, as the title told you, this one kills. The name of this movie sounds like a song because it is one. A song that gets cleverly used in the movie twice in very different scenes to highlight very different moods. It’s also very appropriate to this story of dependency-based love.
And yes, that probably describes most of familial affection, but in the case of the three siblings in this novel, it is heightened. To dramatic movie-worthy heights. The three are Fugit (always nice to see a kid star who becomes a credible adult actor) and two actors I didn’t recognize, who nevertheless did a very good job. Fugit’s Dwight and his sister, jessie, are the older by far siblings who are stuck taking care of their younger brother. The younger brother has a peculiar condition that (although the word itself is never spoken) is basically vampirism. He is a weakly bone-think creatures, all knuckles and vertebrae, who comes to something like life only after drinking blood. It isn’t much of a life for he can barely gets around and never leaves their house, but it’s something. Something his older siblings have decided to be worth killing for. And so, they do. Dwight goes out and brings home tramps and hobos to drain for blood. He is a reluctant killer, not a devoted unquestionable believer like his sister. Dwight longs to get away, to free himself of his familial bonds, he dreams of the ocean and discusses his dreams with a local prostitute – the only person he can talk to. He is a classic tragic character stuck in an impossible situation. And Fugit embodies him very well. His sister with her fundamentalist devotion is an unflinching fanatic holding the family together. But even her (vampire) brother longs for a different life. When he tries to make friends, a tragedy strikes. The nightworld isn’t meant to bleed into the real one and vice versa. Strongly reminiscent of Let Me In (Let The Right One In), this quiet character driven story hinges almost solely upon the mood and the writing and ends up working very well. Nicely shot and strongly acted, it conveys an oppressing sense of desperation that love and obligation can force upon people. Family…the heaviest chains of all. The movie has a timeless look, save for one reference, it can take place anywhere during the recent decades. There are no iPhones, nothing new or flashy. It’s trapped in time the way its characters are. Slow. Pensive. Poignant. It may not work for everyone. Maybe not for people used to the Marvel Universe-style of fast-paced bombastic entertainment. But for fans of quiet dark psychological stories, it is certainly well worth checking out. Just depends on what makes your heart beat. Because the modern culture has studiously and deliberately rid itself of its ability to differentiate between sin and sinner or, more importantly, sinner and their work, Death on the Nile got unfairly, unjustly and tragically shelved for a quite a while. A shame, because I was really looking forward to it. Then again, much like Nightmare Alley which I was also once upon a time really looking forward to, it ended up somewhat disappointing.
But at least, Nightmare Alley didn’t have a scandal attached to it. Death on the Nile did and it was a stupid one at that. Boohoo, Armie the giant Hammer that he is sent out some questionable DMs. Boohoo, turns out he wasn’t the mild-mannered family man he might have looked like on the surface. So, fetish-shame him into hiding and destroy his career? Really? I mean, sure, maybe his situation is more nuanced than that, but also who the F cares? And why do those people care that much? Just look at the guy; he’s 6’5”, drop dead gorgeous and can actually act. What else is he meant to be doing with his life? That guy belongs on screen. So what if he doesn’t meet your narrow morality clauses? Don’t hang out with him, don’t date him, I don’t know, don’t invite him to your birthday party. The sheer gall of not only canceling him entirely as an actor, but also attempting to cancel the projects he and MANY other people have worked on is appalling. And yet, these be the times we live in, so yeah… But hey, the movie made it off the shelves and onto the screens at last, so let’s talk about it. Branagh is back as the famous detective dreamt into existence by the incomparable Agatha Christie and embellished for modern age by Michael Green. Some might say, “Why mess with perfection?” but people can’t help messing with perfection, so there it is. First, Hercule solve the crime on the Orient Express, now he’s going to do it on a luxury boat in Egypt. Because he can, he’s Hercule. And because apparently Branagh and Green find him underdeveloped as a character, they decided to dedicate some screen time to exploring his inner chambers by giving him LURV. The opening de-aged scene set during WWI wasn’t enough, there’s also a romantic undercurrent throughout the movie itself between Hercule and a blues singer. Whether you’ll find it necessary or extraneous is entire up to your discretion. But first and foremost, this is a crime novel. The crime is MURDER. The victim is criminally good-looking and wealthy. The motive…oh well, there are so many. So many petty jealousies and rivalries and complex emotions. Don’t worry, Hercule will sort it out. And his mustache will look good doing it. The movie is as gorgeous as the setting implies. And almost nowhere near as dusty. The cinematography is positively lush. And then it kind of goes overboard…no boat pun intended. It just kind of looks like the entire production took a beating…with a gaudy stick. There’s lavish and then there’s overdone and this movie continuously veers into the latter territory. The cheese, people, the cheese is oozing through the seams. From the very beginning, set in a dance club, there’s just so much going on. There’s very stylized very choreographed dancing and so much of it is positively indecent. You got Armie dirty dancing with his fiancé and then dirtier dancing with Gal Gadot, because a. why wouldn’t you and b. not many men out there in La-La-Land who can wield an Amazonian like that. And from there on, there’s just something cheesily soap-operaish about the proceedings. It’s in the faces, in the reactions, it’s there. But anyway, it’s still fun, lots of bright, loud, festive fun. And you should still absolutely watch it, but it’s not quite up to par…not Branagh’s best nor quite Christie’s best. Please do not continue if you haven’t seen the movie yet. Ok? Ok. So, can we talk about the crime? WTF would you commit a crime where you’re likely to me the prime suspect? In fact, WTF would you make yourself into such a likely prime suspect? WTF would you commit a crime in a locked room/boat style situation with a very limited number of suspects? Why would you do in on a boat with a world-famous detective on it? Did you really think yourself so clever as to get away with it based on a clever trick alibis? Why wouldn’t you go out of your way to cast shade on others? How’d you think it was all going to play out? And above all, why would anyone, ANYONE, throw Gal Gadot over for the crazy eyes whoever played the other love interest? Seriously? Also, Hercule, what a weak, purely supposition-based solution with almost zero evidence to present to people? I mean, seriously, because the color faded to pink and not brown so it isn’t blood? I mean, at this point the entire thing more or less purely depends on the suspects giving themselves over. Which they, like idiots, do. Seriously. And that leaves Hercule to go back to London, shave off his famous mustachio and try to woo the blues singer lady with his facial scars? Yes, seriously. WTF is that? Hercule without a mustache is like Sherlock without a pipe or Clark Kent without glasses…it just doesn’t work. It’s unseemly. Please, get the mustache back. Anyway, the movie still made loads of money, so surely there’ll be another Hercule adventure. One can hope it’ll improve upon this one. But either way, it’ll still be fun. The Bubble got sh*t on by the public opinion, and I’d go so far as to say it was undeserving.
First off, it’s Apatow, so what’d you expect – a highbrow Oscar-worthy drama? Apatow does comedies. Often lowbrow ones. Nothing as dumb as, say, Sandler, but still. This is a comedy. And a fun funny one at that. In a way, a perfect comedy for our times, The Bubble managed to simultaneously spoof the movie industry itself and the madness of the last couple of years of life in general. It’s entirely possible that if you are in showbusiness (on any level, really, even adjacent to it), this movie will work more for you. The jokes, when they land and often they do, are just so right on the money. The last two years and movie industry always have had a certain absurdity to it and all Apatow does is holds up a mirror to it. That’s what art of all brow levels meant to do after all, imitate life, in a way. And so, this tale of the increasingly unruly and maddening shooting of a blockbuster in a bubble works. Is it too soon? Oh, who knows. But it is funny. It’s got a great cast: two Apatow family members as per usual plus some comics plus some surprises. The best surprise by far is David Duchovny, who while still rocking it, at 61 is at long last beginning to look his age if only from the chin up. And yet…and yet, watch that man do a dance routine. It’s pure pleasure. And yes, those were my favorite scenes by far, but the entire movie (all twosome hours of it) was plenty entertaining. Sure the critics were critical – it is their job after all, but this was all I want in a comedy. Bubble up. At some point, horror movie directors realized that the thing that sells the movie is the acting talent. The scares are fun, and the effects can be fun too, but if the actors don’t convey the terror properly, the entire production is going to fall flat on its face.
For a while (yes, I’m talking to you, the 90s), horror genre was populated by CW-pretty young people, teens and teen-adjacent actors getting sliced and diced in slashers. Which is fine, but not really what you’re hoping for. Cheap scares got nothing on the genuine dread a proper horror movie can induce. Enter James Wan and co.…did it start with Wan? A man who understood the fundamental basics of crafting a proper nightmare and the direct importance of hiring people who can act. Anyway, years later and other moviemakers seem to have gotten the formula down…and so behold the latest, The Night House. A deceptively simple story of a recently widowed woman who begins to suspect she is being haunted by the spirit of her dead husband. There are so many ways this movie could have gone. So many wrong ways. As is, it isn’t perfect by far – the pacing is too slow, the plot could use fine tuning, etc. but the moment Rebecca Hall, the movie’s lead, in on screen, you’ll forget all the detractors. I’m not sure I’ve ever been a fan, I’ve never not been a fan, she’s one of those actresses who’s always pretty good but never stood out…although for someone of her towering heights that might be the wrong choice of a description. And yet…in this movie, she is magnificent, she is mesmerizing. A woman simmering in her grief and anger and not backing down from it. A woman unmoored by a sudden inexplicable loss of her love, bewildered and terrified by all that’s going on around her and unflinching in her resolve to sort things out. This is a fine example of great casting – Hall can play unhinged and on the verge perfectly as she had proved some years ago as Christine Chubbuck – a real life story about a depressed reporter who offed herself live on-air. In this movie, her performance has that same sizzling intensity. This is her story through and through, she dominates every scene in every way. Even if it wasn’t written that way, she would have made it so. Without her, it’s an average tale of supernatural interference – smart but plodding and very sedate. With her, it’s an immersive nightmare of psychological terror. So yeah, there you go, to the scenic house by the lake and a love story gone so very, very wrong. And a perfect example of casting a movie just so. Did Hollywood lose the ability to adapt books into movies? Or is it the current obsession with mini-series or series of any kind that drives it to do this?
It seems to veer to extremes…you either get a giant book like The Goldfinch adapted into a 149-minute movie and everyone complains about how much was omitted or you get this 480-page novel adapted into 8 long episodes that it’s difficult to imagine omitted anything at all? In fact, this mini-series adaptation feels like they adapted every single page. On purpose. Nd then stretched it out for dramatic effect. Mind you, Netflix isn’t the only one guilty of this. HBO does the same thing. Outsider, for one, was obscenely protracted. But where HBO goes for class and style, Netflix seems to go for the cheap seats and lachrymose emotional manipulation. Netflix does it for the ladies, it seems, like a fancier version of Lifetime television. You can just see some real housewife somewhere binging this with a box of wine. Which is a shame, because if nothing else, Tony Collette deserves more. She’s a terrific talent and here she is almost isolated on a tiny acting island among the cast of ne’er-do-wells and nobodies. To be fair, the baby-faced actress who plays her daughter does a pretty good job too, but the rest of the cast are just kind of there in a way that screams “we busted our wad on the main two, the rest are budget hires”. If you read, you know of how ubiquitously popular these sorts of thrillers are – the female-driven, female-centric tales of torrid romances gone wrong, the past coming to haunt, and mother/daughter relationships. So this one is very much by the numbers sort of thriller and done fairly well at that, or at least in the way that hits all the numbers. You have your main protagonist played by Collette who has a fairly nice life: a meaningful job, a nice house in a lovely beach town, a handsome ex who, despite the ex status, remains at her beck and call and a daughter. The daughter isn’t as settled in life despite being 30. Or maybe because of being 30, millennials and all. One sunny day mother and daughter go to have a birthday lunch and get rudely interrupted by a public shooter, because, you know, America. Nd then mother goes all heroic and kills the shooter, making national news and doing something she’s been avoiding for the past 30 years – attracting attention to herself. Turns out she has a very good reason to avoid attention. And for the next eight episodes, you’ll get to find out why. The revelations will come as they are uncovered by the daughter or flashed back upon by the mother. There’s some fascinating casting for the past characters, wherein the daughter gets a perfect tiny likeness, but Toni Collette’s 22 year old self is inexplicably looking nothing like her. Remarkably so. I mean, Collette is a unique looking actress, certainly, but her younger self not only looks different facially, she’s about ½ foot shorter. This is kind of funny, because (Nick, the antagonist, naughty boy revolutionary with lamentably pubical facial hair) is also so much shorter than his 30 years older self. Between then two of them, they easily gain a foot in 30 years. Anyway, aside from that, there’s the matter of pacing. It begins at a reasonable clip and then slows itself down, noticeably, almost as if someone said, hey, hey, pace yourself, we got eight episodes to do. And slowed down, some dynamic is lost in favor of Lifetimeish meaningful looks and somber conversations. This is especially noticeable in the last few episodes. You begin to just want to get it over with and even the wide-eyed charms of Toni Collette aren’t enough. It’s Netflix, they just can’t help themselves - they’ve never met a drama they didn’t want to turn into a melodrama. Prime’s done it too, to an extent, when they turned a perfectly good Tell Me Your Secrets into a tv show instead of wrapping things up in the final episode the way they should have. Succinctness it seems no longer has a value in the binge-prone culture. Anyway, there you have it. A slowed down adaptation that it time-wise probably equivalent to an actual reading experience. Perfectly decent leisurely paced mystery thriller shot through with a heavy dose of estrogen. Get your box-wine ready. |
Archives
December 2023
Categories |