​    Just over two decades ago, a comet cruised too close for comfort to Earth and the world freaked out for a moment. Just enough to produce not one, but two major blockbusters about comet disasters – Deep Impact and Armageddon. The first one made a valiant effort to be scientifically plausible and offer some serious near-apocalyptic drama, the second one was Michael Bay dumb fun extravaganza. Guess which one did better at the box office? That’s right dumb ruled even then.
      Anyway, fast-forward to now, get one of the cleverest modern moviemakers and give him a cast of some of the best actors of their respective (as in three different ones) generations and watch cinematic perfection of Don’t Look Up.
      Maybe perfection is too strong of the word, but it’s pretty freaking close.
      It’s definitely the smartest movie I’ve seen in ages.
     Because, you see, the thing is while back in the day the comet hitting the earth might have been the scariest thing, these days it’s the way America as a country would respond to such a threat. And Adam McKay is all too aware of that.
      For a while now, I’ve been saying that (at least in fiction) satirizing the recent years in the US has been a low hanging fruit, because the modern socio-politics have become a satire onto themselves. As in there’s nothing scarier, less plausible, and morbidly frighteningly funnier than the news. And yet, McKay had managed to satirize the self-satire of a world expertly.
       With Meryl as an all too familiar POTUS and her cabinet of nepotistic idiots led by her chief of staff son, the highest office in the country lampoons and ignores the scientific proof of the impending tragedy, leading the two scientists who discovered the comet (the frumpy suburban dad Jack Dawson looking his age and the welcome return of J.Law) to desperately try other means of attracting the public attention to the situation.
         The suburban dad gets sucked into the media circus and the delectable arms of the unrecognizably made-up Cate Blanchett. J.Law gets appropriately outraged and thus mocked on social media and turned into a joke. And yes, that is an excellent commentary of the gender dichotomy in public spotlight.
          Meryl’s a delight, as always. If you thought she made unlikable charming in the Iron Lady, just watch her here.
          Also, watch her son, a self-described chief of staff by with the dragon tattoo, a smarmy entitled jerkoff with an Oedipal compex the size of Texas, cast perfectly if going by looks alone.
          There’s also an interested party of a tech mogul, played wildly by the always terrific Rylance who disappears into this bizarre soft-spoken nightmare of a character.
          And the gruff awesomeness of Ron Perlman playing a proper American heroic general (a one-man stand-in for the US jingoistic gun-totting military compex) who would absolutely blast this comet to smithereens if permitted, all while spewing out racist sexist gobleyook that gets promptly excused by the powers that be as him being from a different generation.
          There’s even a surprisingly tolerable Timothee Chalamet, for the kiddies. This cast is as epic as it is all over the place.
           All in all, without giving too much away, this is an ingenious and frighteningly accurate commentary on the modern American politics and the morally bankrupt idiotic ignorant world in general. The world presented in Don’t Look Up is a world not necessarily worth saving but it’s well worth watching. From its alarming start to its hilarious finish art imitates life all too perfectly. Awesome. Might be one of the best movies of the year.
        

  Every Christmas Eve. My dearly beloved and I watch a different scary Christmas movie. They can be tough to find, and they aren’t always all that good (yes, I’m looking at you the dumdum Black Christmas remake), but most of them are quite decent and often lots of fun.
    This year’s choice was the Aussie/US made but thoroughly Americanized Better Watch Out. Which is essentially an antiHomeAlone. Which is pretty freaking awesome.
     It’s Christmas Eve. And Luke’s bickering parents (perfectly clichéd Madsen and Warburton) are leaving for some party. They deem their 12-year-old son too young to stay home alone and so they call in his 17-year-old babysitter. The babysitter Luke’s been secretly obsessed with. The babysitter Luke thinks tonight’s the night to put the moves on.
     Their quiet evening of movie-watching gets off to a rough start and only gets rougher from there. Someone’s lurking outside, then someone’s lurking inside, then things get really messy.
      It’s difficult to talk about this movie without giving away plot twists and the plot twists here are too enjoyable, so let’s put a pin in the plot talk and discuss other things.
        Things like the cleverness of the plot which takes an oftentimes children-specific holiday and subverts by celebrating the potential dementedness of kids instead of their presupposed innocence. Luke with his cherubic appeal is pitch perfect for the role, played by the Pan of the 2015 Pan-musicale spectacle fame. The kid doesn’t seem to be getting enough acting gigs according to Wikipedia. Why is that?
       His bestie played by the kid from Wildlife (had to look him up, remembered the face, but couldn’t place him) is also perfectly credible as a somewhat reluctant sidekick.
        Trivia time…Oxebould (bff) is reunited here with DeJonge (babysitter) from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit, where they played siblings. I totally forgot about that one.
        The rest of the cast is serviceable, but the movie belongs to the kids. And the kids have the most fun with it. It’s been too long since Macaulay defended his home on Christmas through his crafty heroics, Luke Lerner is the hero for the new age of kids that have been too addled by the modern world with all its compromised ideas, ebbing morals and questionable ethics, all the availability and violence, all the noise. It’s a frightening picture, it certainly makes for a fun movie. Enjoy responsibly and Merry Christmas to all :)

​   The first Matrix movie blew my mind. I’m pretty sure it had that effect on everyone. It was, after all, the effect it was meant to have. The movie had since prominently entered popular culture, you can talk about bullet time or déjà vu all over again or argue the nature of reality itself in Matrix-speak quite comfortably. In other words, it was an instant classic, a cinematic legend.
     Because no one can ever leave things well enough alone, especially when they make oodles of money, it also spawned two largely unnecessary sequels to round out as a trilogy. The sequels failed to maintain the wild freshness of the original, but no fan of Matrix was able to avoid them.
       And then decades passed. A new era of nostalgia-driven media rolled in. The minds addled by social media and instant availability of everyone at all time - you want to know what your high school ex is up to? Easy, look it up. Eventually, you’re going to want to know what your favorite fictional characters are up to now and get frustrated that you can’t look those up.
       But wait, the powers that be are willing to accommodate you, because they sense the money-making potential of this passing-of-time-ignorant pruriency.
        Enter a number of dumb revisits to old dumb shows that no one needs and apparently enough people watch to warrant more, more, more…
        The new Matrix was ushered in by that flawed mentality, but it is a much worthier entry, simply because it’s a much worthier premise. And credit where credit’s due, the single Wachowski sister had done a credible job where Wachowski brothers duo excels before.
         While the first Matrix is prominently etched into my psyche and my memory, the sequels are but a distant dream. Nevertheless, I’d no idea where Lana Wachowski was going to take the next movie. And turns out, she did the best possible thing with it, she twisted it around onto itself.
           Neo/Mr. Anderson is still a man of confused personal duality. Is he a famous programmer/dumpy middle-aged man prone to mental slides and depression or is he a kickass revolutionary that looks like Keanu Reeves? Which would you choose - that’s a no-brainer.
         But he is confused and he needs some expert help of the fun-haired futuristic programmers/fans to guide him on his way. And the second he gets unconfused all he wants is Trinity, because, of course, he would. I mean, who wouldn’t. Plus, those two are soulmates whose powers activate together, they are literally lurv-powered supercharged couple of your wildest science fiction dreams.
        And Reeves and Moss reunite effortlessly, their chemistry Is perfectly intact, both had aged like fine wine and still got what it takes to thrill and look good doing it. And glibness aside, whatever you might think of this spectacle of a movie, it is first and foremost a love story, a credible sincere heartfelt love story between age-compatible adults, which is something you’re not likely to find in cinema these days.
         The new Morpheous is pretty awesome. I’m guessing they couldn’t have the old one back, the old Morpheous looks like he did nothing but eat since the last movies. Not a great look. Not everyone can age as gracefully as Carrie-Anne and Keanu.
          The new Smith is meh.
          But the chief new antagonist, the man behind so much of Neo’s confusion, is the overwhelmingly underwhelming NPH, cast here out of what one can only imagine is some bizarre personal favor. I mean, nothing against NPH and to his credit he does try his best, but this isn’t his world and this isn’t his role.  He’s strictly a sitcom guy / award show host and his acting muscles simply do no stretch to major villainy in a major movie. It’s like he almost kinda makes it and then just snaps back into cute and campy. Tragic, really. Of all the actors out there who would have relished this role…
        Jada Pinkett Smith comes back in some genuinely excellent aged makeup and does a very credible job as an old lady, she is now a leader of different priorities, one whose authority gets questioned by her young rebel crew.
        The rest of the cast is so preciously multiethnic, multiaccented and multiracial, it’s almost as if someone tried to make a point. But it works and that’s all that matters.
         And then there’s the action…the action is WILD. The Matrix movies are known for their action and while once upon a time I may have appreciated, nowadays it doesn’t do much for me. Watching people shoot at each other is about as exciting as watching them chase balls across a field. In fact, the action scenes in this movie were my least favorite – something to sit through while waiting for the story to resume.
         Wachowski sister obviously still relishes the action and to be fair it did look pretty awesome back in the day, but now it has an almost fetishized quality to it, wherein everyone looks, dresses and has the hair done up in a wild range of styles that put one in mind of some trendy Euro dance club. And yes, that is the Matrix look, but the Matrix universe is about so much more than that. So much so that the action and the wardrobe eventually are mostly a distraction.
       Conceptually, the Matrix (the original, mostly) remains one of the smartest trippiest movies ever made. The movie that makes you question the very nature of reality and one’s personal responsibility/complacency in the face of it. It’s a movie about making a choice to live or exist. A movie about daring to take chances. It’s genuinely profound.
       Cinematically, all Matrix movies are spectacles and this one might be more so than most.
       But having that been said, if there had to be a fourth entry in the series…this is it. This is as clever and as good as you might have hoped for from a writer/director who clearly understands and loves this world. And so, it works, it’s fun. It’s crazy long. It’s a lovely nostalgia-lane trip to revisit with the beloved characters once more. But does it make you go…Whoa…in the best Keanu impression? That is the question.

  The Spanish cinema tends to produce some uniquely disturbing nightmares. They don’t even need to involve supernatural – the natural aspect of them is unnatural enough as is.
   This time, in Two, the premise is simple enough. Two people who believe themselves to be complete strangers wake up attached to each other by their stomach. The stiches are crude, but they hold. The sanity will be tougher to hold on to.
    As their memories and their strength slowly returns to them, they begin to attempt to unravel what’s going on. They’ve got no phones, no means on contacting outside, no connection to each other that they can think of, outside of the fact that the female counterpart of their unseemly sandwich is married to a much older and very jealous man who has dedicated his life to studying the number two. Sure, it’s a good number. One up from the loneliest. But would his obsession merit this…?
     What’s so effective about this nightmare is that it has a quality of unraveling downwards. This isn’t about plucky protagonists smashing through the odds and coming out on top the way you might expect from a more traditional (say, American) movie. This is a situation that continues to devolve straight down to its inevitable and tragic denouement.
     You will get to learn how they came to be together – and it’s a doozy – but don’t go in expecting a happy ending.
      Coming in at just 71 minutes and featuring actors I'm not familiar with, the movie is all the more effective for it. It does its most with a seemingly straightforward concept, this is the kind of nightmare where every turn gets more terrifying and you can’t wait to wake up, knowing that it still might haunt you one you do.
      Very disturbing in the best possible way. Recommended for fans of dark psychological scares.

​      If Joe Jackson was a nice man who genuinely had his children’s best interests in mind when he pushed them to become famous and if he only selected two of them (the talented ones, Michael and Janet) and concentrated on them, well, he’d probably be a lot like King Richard – the man behind Serena and Venus Williams’ tennis Cinderella story.
     Which is to say, yes, it’s cinematic-worthy. The audiences love these types of heartwarming underdog stories, predictable as they are. And throw in Will Smith in the mix while you’re at it for a surefire winner.
      And this movie does require Will Smith’s powerhouse personal appeal, otherwise Richard might easily go from a King to a Joker. Not an immediately likable figure, he’s pushy, overbearing, scandalous with the press and, though he initially and foremost presents a devoted family man, there’s one time when his wife lets us in behind that curtain to show a man with a trail of abandoned kids and dreams in his wake.
       It is unclear what makes him zero in so obsessively on making only two of his five daughters into sports stars – apparently, both him and his wife were some time ago atheletes as he says it in his patois, so it’s likely just one of those tales of parental frustrated or unrealized ambition transferred to their kids, but his dedication is impressive. That level of drive, of unquestionable faith in his plan (his written plan in a brochure no less), that level of commitment to the goal, to the dream, to the teeny-tiny tennis shorts…well, yeah, it’s quite something.
       But the most impressive thing is the stress him and his wife place on their girls’ education and character. Not a frequent thing to see and especially (literally) Straight Outta Compton. Time and again, King Richard and his infinitely accommodating wife opt out of easy money and easy fame to make sure their girls have a proper childhood and a proper education. That’s probably the most inspirational thing about this story, though a 14-year-old kid holding her own against the best player in the world is up there too.
       Overall, hitting every branch on the tree of tear-jerking fist-pumping cliché-ridden sports movie this one lands down quite nicely and most of the credit goes to the acting talent in general and specifically Will Smith, who got aged, stooped and scruffed-up for this and still shines his Nova-bright charisma through the movie screen.
       To be fair, I don’t know enough about Williams family to know how authentic the movie adaptation of their story is, so these are just thoughts on the movie itself. They must have gotten some things right, going by the documentary footage thrown in and the fact that the Williams sisters are the best tennis players in the world. And to think it all started with a man with a plan…
        Pushy/stage/Svengali parents everywhere might want to take a page out of King Richard’s book brochure.
 

    The movies are great. Who doesn’t love the movies? Who wouldn’t want their world to be more exciting with more attractive people in it? Who wouldn’t like a happy ending? The movies don’t merely entertain, sometimes they go as far as to attempt to rewire our brains. Lately, it has been doing that with ages.
     Granted, movie stars don’t age like their audiences. They take a much more gracious, much more time/gravity/logic defying approach fueled good genetics, good grooming, and other, more chemically based, interventions. And still, every so often you just gotta go…WTF?
      Like when Melissa McCarthy’s latest movie cast her (a woman just entering her 50s) as a grieving mother of a baby? Or like when Ms. Berry has recently cast herself (a woman well into her 50s) as an ass-kicking mother of a 6-year-old? Or as Sandra Bullock has just done a turn as a 57-year-old woman who appears to be playing a 40-year-old character?
      Mind you, all of these women do look younger than their ages and some of them did defy nature enough to have babies very late in life, but still…you CAN tell, and it IS distracting.
      And so, when Sandra Bullock plays a woman who just got done serving a 20-year sentence for protecting her baby sister by allegedly shooting a sheriff (but she didn’t shoot no deputy) and here Bullock plays both her younger self and her current self, while her baby sister is four or five to start with and 24 or 25 later, it is genuinely distracting.
      Am I an agist? Sure, call me an agist. But this isn’t without merit. When we first meet Bullock’s character, the kid doesn’t seem like her (even much younger) sister, the kid seems like her kid. In later scenes too. They are just too obviously far apart in age. In fact, Bullock’s character implies she’s about 40 in present day by saying she spent 50% of her life in prison, and maybe women coming out of a 20-year sentence do look like they very well preserved mid 50s, but …do they?
       Bullock has always been a strange-looking actress - so precision-chiseled – but now that she appears to be stuck that way, it’s just too glaringly obvious.
       Why is this review ALL about looks and ages? Well, because it’s everywhere and, like the emperor’s new clothes, no one is talking about it. And when these things are salient to the plot, when they distract from the plot, it seems worth mentioning. Even if it’s just one ranty review no one will ever read.
 
        But also, let’s talk about the movie. It’s apparently based on Unforgiven, which is a very good BBC show that relies on the exceptional memory of possible criminals. Which is to say it deals with historical crimes and then tracks down those involved and they all remember the events of 20/30/40 years ago like it was yesterday despite often being advanced in years. Kinda crazy, but the acting and the writings so good, you forget about it.
 
        Now quite the case with this movie, though. The acting’s good, Bullock does her level-best, and the writing’s decent enough, but the directing is overdone. With the incessant repetitive flashbacks and slow-boiling plot, the movie drags. Not terribly so, but noticeably. Straight down to its clichéd redemption-flavored lachrymose denouement.
       
       Netflix’s #1 hit prior to being unseated by the boombastic Red Notice was Bullock’s previous vehicle, Bird Box. Now that was a legitimately good movie. She’s obviously trying to get back there again with this movie, but it just isn’t the same, no matter how heartstringtuggingly maudlin it gets. It’s entertaining enough and you’re not likely to want your time back (not all of it anyway), but it’s just ok of a movie.
      It might have been pretty great as a season of Unforgiven – BBC has a fundamental understanding of casting real looking people to play real looking people of appropriate ages and all that, but the hollywooden and hollyplasticed approach on top of oversimplifying the entire production for the backseats just doesn’t quite cut it. It’s forgivable, it’s more along the lines of unmemorable.
       Next up is presumably Nicole Kidman, who barely looks real anymore, playing a 30-year-old mother of a baby? Or something of that (un)nature.
 
 

    Tis the season for the Oscars…falala lala lala lala. Netflix has been trying to step up their game, offsetting their normal piles of pandering crap with some genuine Oscar contenders, you know, the serious dramas with serious acting and all that.
    Ms. Berry wants an Oscar. She already has one and (almost unbelievably) to this day and age remains the only black actress to win one for a main role. Now she wants another. Mind you, I’m not sure she was all that deserving of one for Monster’s Ball – but everyone was just too dazzled by her going so makeup free and rough they gave it to her anyway.
     For this one, she just might actually deserve the golden man. Not that it’s an especially good movie – Bruised is one of those athlete redemption stories that hits every cliché it can find – but Berry’s commitment to her material is most impressive.
     It stands to mention, I’m not a huge fan of hers, I never found her especially talented or as attractive as everyone seems to think she is, she’s likely my least favorite Berry, way below blue-, straw-, etc. so this is an unbiased as it gets.
     But credit where credit due, she not only starred in this movie, she directed it, directed herself doing some pretty crazy sh*t. On top of it, she’s in crazy good shape. Let’s face it, the woman’s 55. That’s insane, that’s some vampire-like age-defying magic. Even without makeup, even covered in bruises, she still can easily pass for someone a decade younger. I presumed she played someone a decade younger based on her character, who has a 6-year-old. Granted, in real life Berry has a kid about that age, but that’s some celebrity nonsense. Real life people don’t have babies at that age. None that I know of.
     The kid is sort of a catalyst for Berry’s character. Up till now she was getting by with cleaning houses and drinking, after ungracefully bowing out during a fighting tournament. But now she’s suddenly a mom and she’s gotta step up her game, so she decides to train to get back into fighting, gets herself a new coach and goes at it, full throttle.
      You know exactly how the story is going to play out and it’s been done before in a number of movies, arguably superior movies. So the main thing to watch here is Berry and, boy, does she go for it. It’s like she has an Oscar checklist on her and is determined to hit every line…
   Deglamorization -check
   Alcoholism – check
   No makeup, rough appearance – check
   Stunning physical transformation – check
   Viscerally realistic sex scenes – check
   Lesbianism – check
   Brutal realistic violence – check
   Child abuse – check
   Panic attacks – check
   And on and on it goes…
 
    So yeah, someone give Ms. Berry an Oscar, she finally earned it.
 
   Did I love the movie? No, not really, Did I love Berry’s character? No, not really. In fact, she’s positively sh*tty to her lesbian lover (25 year her junior Sheila Atim, way to buck the system that normally skews such age difference only for men), practically using her for her own purposes. She’s also volatile in a way that may not be great for a new mother, however cute the kid is. But, all that aside, this movie was just too bruising of an experience to not be properly rewarded.

​    Jane Campion has been away from directing for 12 years. That’s a long time. That’s approximately how long her new movie feels like. Mind you, she was never a fast-paced director, always moving at her own Campion-speed, but this movie is so precision crafted as an Oscar vehicle meant to let the actors act that it seemingly forgets all about silly small things like dynamism or audience connection.
   The acting is, indeed, first rate, and if that’s all you look for in a movie, by all means, go for it. If you have some wild unrealistic expectations of, oh I don’t know, being actually entertained or engaged or excited about it…forget it.
     Campion both written and directed this one, it’s based on a book I’ve never heard of and has to do with a gay cowboy in the Montana of the past.  But wait, you say, wasn’t there already a story like that? didn’t they already make a movie like that? Why, yes, lovely reader, they did, a far superior one.
     But alas, Campion went there anyway. And slowly, slowly, slooooowly told a story of two brothers who live in the middle of nowhere 1925 Montana - a steady, measured and doughy one played by Jesse Plemons and a lean, mean ranching machine played by (someone give him an Oscar already) Cumberbatch.
     Plemons marries a local woman (his real-life squeeze Dunst), who has a teenage son played by the so-gaunt-he’s-practically-etiolated Smit-McPhee, a child start that grew up in so bizarrely thin he appears to be two dimensional.
      On this creepy (bunny dissecting) and creepily thin child Cumberbath’s crude cowboy bestows his affections; affections that apparently echo his own he once had for a mentor/lover? figure. Freshly married Dunst drinks herself steadily into semi-oblivion but she noticed and minds. Drama ensues. Drama continues. Until someone drops dead. Yes, that suddenly, for Campion is a director who loves to linger on random details and skip over giant chunks of relevant plot.
      So yeah, you got cinematography that takes the most advantage out of the virtually negative in its isolation space and striking mountains, you got Oscar-caliber acting on all accounts…and that’s it. The story itself it too underwhelming and too underwhelmingly told. And this might just be me, but I’m all about the story.
     This movie is by-design a critical darling, it's built for acclaim. Other reviews seem to state as much. Simmering, slow-boiling, passionate blah, blah, blah...sure, yeah, but look at what it sacrifices to get there. Look how tediously pretentious it turned out.
     Campion gets her kicks with some more male nudity, her previous obsessions included a dubious stud in Keitel and here she’s got Cumberbatch taking a pretty thorough mud bath including a brief full monty. This is how much Benedict wants an Oscar – he’ll mud bathe, he’ll masturbate with cloth, he’ll longingly squint his repression at strange youth and growl his gruffness in his most Americana accent, he’ll wear a most unflattering procession of chops that’ll give his skinny frame a pretty silly silhouette.
     So yeah, someone recognize the power of Cumberbatch, for the only power this movie has is to put you to sleep and make you wish for your time back.