Tag Archives: Chris Messina

Movie Review ~ The Boogeyman (2023)

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The Facts:

Synopsis: When a desperate patient unexpectedly shows up at the home of a widowed therapist and his two daughters seeking help, he leaves behind a terrifying supernatural entity that preys on families and feeds on the suffering of its victims.
Stars: Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivian Lyra Blair, Marin Ireland, Madison Hu, LisaGay Hamilton, David Dastmalchian
Director: Rob Savage
Rated: PG-13
Running Length: 98 minutes
TMMM Score: (1/10)
Review: Originally published in 1973 as a short story in an innocuous magazine, Stephen King’s ‘The Boogeyman’ is more prominently known to readers as a selection in King’s 1978 short story collection, ‘Night Shift’. That first amassing of King’s tiny terrors holds some mighty famous doozies which would go on to inspire film adaptations that ranged from the spooky (‘Jerusalem’s Lot’ became the 1978 TV movie Salem’s Lot, a remake is finished and waiting on a release date) to the silly (King himself would adapt ‘Trucks’ into infamous turkey Maximum Overdrive in 1986) to the freaky (1984’s Children of the Corn) to the icky (1990’s Graveyard Shift…those rats!). A solid story produced the one genuinely good movie; strangely, it is often the least mentioned, 1991’s Sometimes They Come Back. 

It would have been great to report that The Boogeyman is as scary as the preview makes it out to be, a balm for King fans that have suffered countless inequities with lame adaptations of the author’s work. I was encouraged by early reports that test screenings had gone so well that 20th Century Studios and Hulu scrapped plans for a direct-to-streaming debut and opted for an exclusive theatrical release. Sadly, with its patchwork script and frequent lapses in common sense, The Boogeyman leaves audiences aimlessly wandering in the darkness as much as it does its characters. Meeting its quota for jump scares and only just, it’s a cash-gobbling theater filler for a studio and filmmakers that can do much better.

In fairness, calling King’s original story flimsy is putting it mildly. Written during a time when King favored ugly words spat out by backward people, it’s the kind of tale you read now and wonder when the author will get to the inevitable point. How it took three respectable screenwriters, Scott Beck (A Quiet Place), Bryan Woods (Haunt), and Mark Heyman (The Skeleton Twins), to come up with such a pithy story to wrap around King’s initial treatment is mystifying. There’s so little happening (or explained) in the final project that it’s…frightening.

The Harper family has suffered a terrible loss and is struggling to put the pieces of their life back together. Dad Will (Chris Messina, I Care a Lot) is a therapist seeing patients out of his home, doing work for them that he ignores for himself. Teenager Sadie (Sophie Thatcher, Yellowjackets) is finally ready to return to school and face her (incredibly b***hy) classmates, another hurdle in a long healing journey. At the same time, her younger sister Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) prefers to sleep with an array of lights on in her bedroom. Little hints are sprinkled initially, but it honestly takes a solid twenty minutes for the script to reveal their mother was killed in an accident (I’m guessing car, but the way Messina drives with his back facing oncoming traffic, he’s clearly not attentive to the rules of the road) and even then, the mother barely functions as a character. However, she factors heavily into the emotional beats of the plot.

As if this grief wasn’t enough, in walks Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian, The Suicide Squad) to see Will for an emergency session. (This entire sequence makes up the source short story.)  During their time, Lester tells Will of an evil that infiltrated his family, with a horrible fate that took his children. Disturbed by Lester’s behavior, Will leaves to “use the bathroom” (code for call the cops) and, in doing so, lets the man wander freely around the house. Will doesn’t know that Sophie has returned early from school after a disastrous first day and will face Lester, setting off a wicked chain of events that unleashes a similar lurking danger in the Harper house. At first targeting Sawyer before turning its attention to Sophie, the sisters must work together to beat back a creature that feeds on grief too raw to shake entirely.

I’m not dismissing that there’s a nugget of good story here. Evil that feeds on unbridled emotion (especially in children who often cannot control it) is a frequent theme in King’s work. With a more sophisticated production, The Boogeyman could have been something special. In the hands of its adaptors, it’s a confusing blob of scenes that don’t align with what came before. It’s as if each of the three writers took an assigned number of sequences and just mashed them all in a lump without cross-checking with one another what’s happening. That’s why you’ll have three people in one house being attacked by a creature, but no one hearing their family member is in trouble or coming to their aid. Multiple times throughout the film, Sophie or Sawyer screams a high-pitched wail, and Will is nowhere to be found. Where has Will vanished to? Often the scariest thing in the film is realizing the girls are left alone so often during an increasingly violent period. It’s obvious there’s been late-stage editing done to tone down parts of the movie to get it to its assigned PG-13 rating. So not only is it rarely scary, but there’s also little bang for your buck in the way of a typical horror payoff.

Director Rob Savage was responsible for one of the best pandemic projects, the terrifying Zoom marvel Host (as well as the creepy 2021 Dashcam), so it’s surprising his name is on such nonsense. His talent for well-timed jump scares and its jittery aftershock is evident, but it’s the time between those ingenious moments when the film is just the absolute pits. It doesn’t help matters the actors look as confused as the script…when we can see them, of course. For a movie about a creature that hunts in the darkness, it becomes enormously funny that characters who know the rules will willingly walk by light switches and lamps without flipping them on or, at the very least, using their cell phone. 

Ending with an Elvis Presley music cue that is the most foolishly on-the-nose needle drop I’ve ever heard is simply the sour cherry on top of this sloppy sundae of a film. The Boogeyman is one of the worst Stephen King adaptations audiences have been treated to, a mostly scare-less drag that’s been smartly marketed as a terror-filled nailbiter. Save your money and gnaw your nails at one of the classic King novels that have received the big screen treatment.

MSPIFF Review ~ Dreamin’ Wild

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Dreamin’ Wild

Director: Bill Pohlad
Cast: Casey Affleck, Noah Jupe, Zooey Deschanel, Chris Messina, Jack Dylan Grazer, Walton Goggins, Beau Bridges
Synopsis: What if a childhood dream suddenly came true–-but thirty years later? That’s what happened to singer/songwriter Donnie Emerson. His dream of success suddenly–and unexpectedly–came true but only as he approached 50 years old. And while it brought hopes of second chances, it also brought ghosts of the past and long-buried emotions as Donnie, his brother Joe and their entire family came to terms with their newly found fame.
Thoughts: By the end of writer/director Bill Pohlad’s Dreamin’ Wild (the opening night selection of the 42nd Minneapolis International Film Festival), many of my personal boxes had been checked. Quiet indie vibe? Check. Music biopic with a tender heart? Check Check. Frustrated grown men with unresolved dad issues and brothers that don’t communicate but need to talk about all their feelings? A hat trick of checks. What keeps Dreamin’ Wild with its head so firmly above water is that same moving spirit that propelled Pohlad’s 2014 Brian Wilson biography Love & Mercy to become such an unexpected critical and word-of-mouth hit. Now Pohlad returns for another musical tale, bringing to the screen the true story of musician Donnie Emerson and his brother Jeff, who found a second chance at fame when both least expected it. The circumstances in which it occurred sound like a concoction worked up for movie schmaltz, but the film is based on a New York Times feature by Steven Kurutz published in 2012.

As Donnie, Casey Affleck has his vocals dubbed, but everything else about his performance is raw and real. There are hints of his Oscar-winning role in Manchester by the Sea at times, but perhaps here there’s an even more world-weariness at the opportunities he expected that never came to be. We understand early on Donnie was a genius talent who, like many, existed in obscurity until a random twist of fate caught him and his family in the spotlight. That renewed interest brings back good and bad memories; inevitable tensions solidify with older brother Joe (a superb Walton Goggins), and Donnie’s guilt over his father going into debt to finance his young career is reignited. Scenes between Affleck and Beau Bridges as his dad are achingly real – it’s the best Bridges has been in ages. 

Noah Jupe fills out the cast as young Donnie, with Jack Dylan Grazer as young Joe. I couldn’t quite see Jupe growing up to be Affleck (much like I couldn’t see Paul Dano’s Brian Wilson growing up to be John Cusack’s Wilson in Love and Mercy), but both actors find overlap in each other’s performance that helped the viewer see them both as the same person. In a post-screening QA, Pohlad spoke of his use of ‘magical realism’ to push some of the narrative boundaries; Affleck and Jupe benefit from this technique in one highly effective scene together.

If one person gets short shrift, it’s Zooey Deschanel as Donnie’s wife, Nancy. Though Deschanel has the opportunity to sing several times (like Jupe, she does her own singing) and has a few standout scenes, she’s often absent. Come to think of it, the children Donnie and Nancy share are also out of the picture after the first ten minutes. Pohlad may not be great about tying up all the loose ends or connecting each dot. Still, he’s wise enough for much of Dreamin’ Wild to fill the connective tissue between reactionary beats with material that rewards the emotional maturity of his audience.

Movie Review ~ Air

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Sonny Vaccaro, a shoe salesman at Nike, works to sign rookie Michael Jordan to a deal to wear their shoes.
Stars: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Marlon Wayans, Chris Messina, Chris Tucker, Julius Tennon, Matthew Maher, Viola Davis
Director: Ben Affleck
Rated: R
Running Length: 112 minutes
TMMM Score: (8/10)
Review:  As someone that watched all ten episodes of the exhaustive (but excellent) Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance, I approached Air wondering if the world truly needed another movie to tell us how great (and wealthy) an athlete Michael Jordan is. Even those unfamiliar with the documentary should have some base understanding of Jordan’s phenomenal talent. With his hands in multiple businesses and media, he’s more of a household name than some global political leaders. Hearing about the upcoming release of Air, I was scratching my head as to what could be so very special about it to attract such A-level talent for what seemed to be a rehash of a small chapter of a longer novel.

The script for Air was quite a hot commodity in 2021, showing up on the famous Hollywood Black List (the annual tally of the most popular screenplays not yet produced). While it didn’t languish there as long as some have, Alex Convery had to have been thrilled to see it get pounced on by Amazon Studios. If director Ben Affleck stuck close to the original script, and with the fast turnaround for casting/filming I have every reason to believe he has, you could see why it held appeal as a slick, showy approach to the history of the creation of a landmark partnership that changed the face of the retail market, and the way corporations were challenged to compensate their athletic collaborators.

In 1984, Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck, Gone Girl) was considering possibly laying off his entire basketball shoe division. The running shoe company couldn’t compete with popular brands like Adidas or Converse without a signed major athlete. Sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon, Downsizing) was striking out in scouting high school players and unhappy with the limitations being put on him by his boss. As the season draws near, the options look grim except for one name none of them (especially Jason Bateman’s character, executive Rob Strasser) think they can get: Michael Jordan. 

Jordan (through his representation) had stated publicly that he wasn’t interested in Nike, so it appeared the game was already lost. Sonny wasn’t deterred, though, seeing something in the player and his family that sparked him to make a series of bold moves that put his team and company in a precarious position, all in the hope of making a deal. Bypassing Jordan’s cantankerous, foul-mouthed agent (Chris Messina, She Dies Tomorrow) and appealing directly to the family’s decision-maker, Jordan’s mother (Viola Davis, The Woman King), Sonny had limited time to work with designer Peter Moore (Matthew Maher, Live by Night) and resources from Knight to take a shot that will save them all.

Is it too early to talk about Best Actor hopefuls for 2024? I know, the thought weirds me out, too, but Damon’s doing something damn special in Air. It’s the daddyiest of all dad films, but take those scenes away, and you have Damon getting passionate about little things that, in turn, make us care about the outcome we all know is inevitable. A rah-rah speech Damon delivers near the end to Jordan is so confident and inspiring that I thought I could play basketball for the Bulls after.   Also…the boldest move ever would be to recognize Messina for his foam-mouthed agent from hell. Talk about an unforgettable supporting performance that resonates throughout the rest of the film! 

Affleck (or the script) makes the interesting move never to show Jordan’s face during the film, opting for archival footage in intervals to flash forward to the superstar athlete the young man with his back to the camera will become. Instead, we deal primarily with Deloris Jordan (it’s said that Michael Jordan’s only request to Affleck was that Davis plays his mother) with her husband James (Davis’ real-life husband, Julius Tennon) sitting close by watching her work. Allowing this aspect of Jordan’s deal with Nike to be fleshed out was fascinating, and while this public knowledge wasn’t a big reveal, Davis and Damon play these final scenes with a hint of suspense that keeps us creeping to the edge of our seats.

That’s what shocked me about the Air experience in general: how much of the film I felt like I was holding my breath as to what would happen next. When I already knew what would happen next. That’s the sign of a filmmaker (Affleck) and screenwriter (Convery) with a confident grip on the audience. Playing with an almost documentary-like feel, Air flies high with skilled performances (and ample ’80s needle drops) and demonstrates again that Affleck is a director never to be counted out.

Movie Review ~ I Care A Lot

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A court-appointed legal guardian defrauds her older clients and traps them under her care. But her latest mark comes with some unexpected baggage.

Stars: Rosamund Pike, Eiza González, Dianne Wiest, Peter Dinklage, Chris Messina, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Nicolas Logan, Kevin McCormick, Michael Malvesti, Liz Eng, Alicia Witt

Director: J. Blakeson

Rated: R

Running Length: 118 minutes

TMMM Score: (8/10)

Review:  A lot of good came out of 2014’s Gone Girl.  For one thing, after the cool reception of the big screen adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it gave director David Fincher an opportunity to bounce back with another hotly anticipated film based on a number one bestselling novel.  Then there was leading man Ben Affleck’s comeback story that was just kicking off after a Best Picture Oscar win for 2012’s Argo and the general feeling in Hollywood that he was robbed of a Best Director nomination.  Though he was soon to feel the heat from the comic book nerdom in the unwinnable battle of playing Batman for several films in the ill-fated DC Extended Universe, he was an interesting choice for the role but ultimately a smart move on Fincher’s part.

The real reason we’ll continue to talk about Gone Girl long after people have stopped debating the merits of the book vs. the movie is Rosamund Pike’s Oscar-nominated performance as a missing wife that may not be as missing as we’re led to believe.  Pike won critics and audiences over in how she brought this character that was so complex and unreliable on the page to life, adding in extra nuances the book wasn’t able to supply due to the limitations of its medium.  The character is unforgettable in so many ways and some of that is the collaboration between Pike, her director, and her co-star but it’s mostly Pike allowing an at times unlikable character to speak up and out, eventually burrowing under our skin to strangely become someone to cheer on.

After all the hoopla, you’d have expected there to be more to the Pike peak and while the actress had a solid resume before the film and nomination, her films over the last half decade have been slightly on the lackluster side.  Most have been supporting turns that haven’t allowed her the chance to shine like she could and when she does take center stage, like in 2020’s Radioactive, the films don’t quite rise up to meet her.  It’s a thrill to report, then, that right off the bat in 2021 Pike is back with I Care a Lot, the supremely entertaining new Netflix movie that premiered back in September 2020 at the Toronto International Film Festival where it received a nice round of notices.  Even better, Pike’s character feels like a slight riff on her Gone Girl persona and while it doesn’t seek to repeat the same work she did there, you see similarities in the characters so much that you almost wonder if Pike wouldn’t consider Amy from Gone Girl and Marla from I Care a Lot kindred spirits.

Meet Marla Grayson, a court-appointed guardian for a number of elderly or at-risk adults that need her expertise.  According to the law, she has access to their finances and authority over where they live, their medical care, their routines, and what they eat.  Even if they have family that are living, as long as she can convince the court she is better suited to take on these adults as her ward, she’s in charge.  It’s a wicked little con, this predatory guardianship masquerading as elder care, and no one is doing it better than Marla Grayson.  Sadly a concept based in reality, predatory guardians search for seniors with a history of health issues and either get them to sign over their rights or have the courts make the final call.  Once the guardianship is in place, it’s hard to get it dissolved without the person under the care making a direct statement they are well enough to care for themselves.  Easier said than done considering how these elderly individuals are “cared for” with the types of treatment they are subjected to by their “guardians.”   With her razor-sharp bob, perfect make-up, and always on trend clothes, Marla (Pike) is the very picture of having her act together.  How could the court see her as anything but looking out for the best interest of her clients?

Working with her second in command and live-in lover Fran (Eiza González, Paradise Hills), Marla is always looking for that perfect mark, or ‘cherry’, someone with no immediate family or living relatives that could show up to get in her way or claim any inheritance monies at the time of death.  One day, that fruitful horse comes in for Marla in the form of Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest, Let Them All Talk), a woman in her late ‘60s living alone in a big, beautiful house and sitting on a pile of cash.  Jennifer’s doctor is getting a kickback from Marla by tipping her off to patients that may be good targets for her type of service as is a local nursing home manager that can charge a lot of funds for his care services so all it takes is a stop in family court (without Jennifer present) and an emotional plea for Jennifer’s ‘safety’ and Marla has a new ward and what looks to be a big payday.  Before Jennifer knows it, her house is gone and her possessions have been auctioned off with Marla using the money from the sale to pay her own salary.  There’s just one rather large problem…this ward isn’t as alone in the world as Marla thinks.

Writer/director J. Blakeson wisely eschews the “based on true events” angle that could have been taken and opts instead for an original story that allows for a healthy helping of ice-cold bitterness traveling throughout a number of the characters.  In some films, this could become a real drag and stagnate into sameness fairly quickly but Blakeson’s film has such an energy to it that watching people take bites at one another only propels it forward with more adrenaline.  Marla is unapologetic in her mission to succeed and isn’t deterred by threats on a verbal or physical level.  While we don’t get much in the way of her backstory save for a brief (and telling) reference to her mother, an early confrontation between her and the son of a ward gives the impression she made a decision a number of years back to face all challenges head on and suffer any consequences as a result with open arms.

As one of maybe ten people on the planet that has yet to watch Game of Thrones, I can’t say I’ve yet joined the Peter Dinkalge (Three Christs) fan club based on the films I’ve seen him in so far, yet his co-starring role in I Care a Lot is likely the most I’ve enjoyed him from start to finish.  His first appearance is long after the tone of the film has been set by Pike and Blakeson, so he struggles with some adjustment at first and even if he arguably never fully gets that balance right, he makes a nice foil for Pike and a worthy sparring partner in several scenes near the end of the picture.  I only wish he wasn’t always trying to be a ‘character’ instead of just letting his acting happen naturally…he consistently appears to be working harder than everyone else for no real reason and it winds up shining the wrong spotlight on him.

It’s Pike’s picture all the way no matter how you spin it and it’s a shame there likely isn’t room for her on the Oscar ballot this year because here’s another complicated female role that deserves recognition.  Far from a decent human, insanely stubborn, and comically driven to succeed by stepping over anyone and anything without saying ‘excuse me’, Marla will still earn your admiration in spite of all her behavior.  That’s says a lot not just about Blakeson’s screenplay but in how Pike has layered Marla to have more to her than we originally see.  It’s not a softer side, per se, but it is someone that just wants to be taken seriously and to play by the rules…even if the rules may not ultimately be fair.  Movies that walk an edge like this and make an anti-hero the star of the show can be a turn-off for people but I appreciated that Blakeson saw Marla’s character through to the uncompromising end…her hard shell exterior isn’t an act so don’t waste your time waiting for her to break.

Regrettably faltering right when it needs to fly the highest, I Care a Lot almost makes it to the finish line maintaining the high level of entertainment it kept up pace with for its run time…and that’s too bad because it gets so close.  Take that as a minor quibble if you will but it nagged at me, especially seeing that Blakeson seemed to have everything so snappy and under control.  All said, this is one of the best Netflix offerings in recent memory and makes for an all-around crackling watch.  Don’t miss it.

Movie Review ~ The Secrets We Keep

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The Facts:

Synopsis: In post-World War II America, a woman, rebuilding her life in the suburbs with her husband, kidnaps her neighbor and seeks vengeance for the heinous war crimes she believes he committed against her.

Stars: Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Chris Messina, Amy Seimetz, Jackson Dean Vincent, Madison Paige Jones, Jeff Pope, David Maldonado, Ed Amatrudo, Ritchie Montgomery

Director: Yuval Adler

Rated: R

Running Length: 97 minutes

TMMM Score: (5/10)

Review:  In 1990, playwright Ariel Dorfman wrote a charged play titled Death and The Maiden which centered on a former political prisoner that has started a new life with her husband in a remote part of the world.  Though it’s been years since her torture and rape at the hands of brutal guards, she remains haunted by her memories. When she believes she has run into one of her former captors by chance, she kidnaps him and enacts revenge…even though she isn’t totally sure he is the man who assaulted her those many years ago.  The play was a hit in London and Broadway before being turned into a 1994 movie from Roman Polanski starring Sigourney Weaver.

I was reminded of Death and the Maiden often while watching the new drama The Secrets We Keep because it shares many plot points with Dorfman’s earlier work.  Though it strays from the 1990 piece is several key areas, it almost feels like a slinky remake, albeit with less of a politicized edge than Dorfman implied and Polanski capitalized on.  Director and co-screenwriter Yuval Adler and his screenwriter collaborator Ryan Covington actually wind up treading on a lot of familiar ground here, producing a film that has a meaningful message at its core but is hampered by a clumsy delivery system.  Instead of truly delving into the dark areas it hints at, it opts to keep the night light on and avoid confronting anything seriously horrific.

Adler sets the film in 1959 anytown USA where housewife Maja (Noomi Rapace, Dead Man Down) lives with her doctor husband Lewis (Chris Messina, Live by Night) and son Patrick (Jackson Dean Vincent).  Their idyllic, post WWII town is thriving with a local refinery in full bore and an influx of returning veterans expanding their families.  The film has barely caught its breath when Maja hears a familiar whistle while lounging in the park with her son and follows the sound to a man that stirs a repressed memory.  A Romanian, Maja’s family was slaughtered by the Nazis and she was raped, along with her sister, by a gang of soldiers before escaping…the survivors guilt she harbors has been crippling and it all returns with that one whistle.

Convinced she has found one of the men that committed that heinous crime against her, she quickly puts together a plan to kidnap him and force him into confessing.  Turns out, Maja is quite resourceful and nabbing the unsuspecting man (Joel Kinnaman, RoboCop) and getting him set-up in her basement isn’t all that difficult…but getting him to admit who he is will be.  With Lewis involved and her desperation to get the truth becoming more important than ever, Maja will resort to anything to uncover the truth.  Yet the question lingers, has Maja accused the wrong man?  Hints at psychiatric trauma and recent therapeutic sessions suggest there’s maybe a reason to doubt her recall of the events or call into question her judgement where her family is concerned.

Though the film is filled with numerous moments of supposed tension hinging on the discovery of a man trapped in the basement of this otherwise picturesque couple, I was surprised at how little energy the movie spends to create any kind of spark in anyone or anything.  There’s this general somber tone throughout and a drained-out color scheme that makes everything feel it’s either just coming back to life or about to take its last breath.  Rapace in particular looks so suspicious, you’d think she was hiding an entire football team and their grandmothers in her basement…she always looks rattled.  When she befriends the wife of the man (played by She Dies Tomorrow director Amy Seimetz with the kind of interesting mystery the entire film needed  more of) I kept waiting for the wife to ask her to blink twice if she needed help at home.

While the production design is solid and the costumes are more than just your usual pencil skits and trousers look, everything else just seems to tow the line…and that’s too bad because there’s an important story here waiting to be told.  Messina seems to be the one that’s hopped on the right train and knows where he’s headed and Kinnaman does too, for a bit, until the character has a shift that doesn’t get to be explored fully.  I always want to like Rapace more in films but possibly with the exception of 2012’s Prometheus she’s just never been as good or well represented as she was in the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo films in Sweden that made her famous.  While she’s well suited for the role, it ultimately proves to be another wrong fit for the actress.

The atrocious crimes committed by German Nazis against Jews and other marginalized Europeans during WWII have been explored and exploited by the entertainment industry for years by now.  It’s gotten to the point that the horrific rapes and murders depicted in the flashbacks seen in The Secrets We Keep are easy to chalk up alongside everyday crimes we’ve been desensitized to by the television and movies we watch.  I say that not to condemn the filmmakers of this film or any other with similar themes but to put into perspective how commonplace the acts portrayed within seem to have become…and make sure we never truly forget the real lives that were affected.  That’s one key area where the film succeeds, in detailing how this trauma can infest your entire life and the lives of others if not dealt with.

Movie Review ~ She Dies Tomorrow

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A woman’s conviction that she will die tomorrow spreads like a contagion through a town.

Stars: Kate Lyn Sheil, Jane Adams, Kentucker Audley, Katie Aselton, Chris Messina, Tunde Adebimpe, Jennifer Kim, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Michelle Rodriguez, Josh Lucas, Adam Wingard

Director: Amy Seimetz

Rated: R

Running Length: 84 minutes

TMMM Score: (1/10)

Review:  In theater, there are a number of urban legends about productions or performances that were so bad the audience began to turn on the actors onstage.  There is the long-held rumor (that I don’t quite believe) of the matinee crowd attempting to sing above Sheena Easton in a Broadway production of Man of La Mancha to overcome her off key warbling.  The granddaddy of them all, though, is the tale meant to send a shiver down the spine of every theater nerd that dared overact and provide hearty laughter to everyone else.  Yes, it’s the one revolving around a troupe’s noble effort in a staging of The Diary of Anne Frank that had such poor acting it had one fed-up patron proclaim loudly “They’re in the attic!!!”

I couldn’t help but think of that particular anecdote shortly after She Dies Tomorrow began…because it’s around that time I blurted out “Is it tomorrow yet?” and then spent the next 75 minutes waiting for that moment to arrive.  Though it boasts a nifty poster and an appealing premise that appears tailor-made to the self-contained uncertainty we find ourselves living in, this incessantly grating bit of delirium shouldn’t have waited to put anyone (least of all us , the viewers) out of its misery.  Thus, it ends up being exactly the kind of messy dreck that gives indie films good street cred by those that seek out obscure titles to fawn over but is a complete dud for anyone else.

Though she’s recently moved into a new apartment and appears to have a semblance of a decent life, Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil, You’re Next) thinks she’s going to die tomorrow.  That’s it…that’s basically the entire premise of the movie that gets repeated over and over again within actress turned writer/director Amy Seimetz’s (2019’s Pet Sematary) languid script.  Actually, there’s a supposed bit of intrigue as to how Amy’s belief of her impending doom infects everyone she comes in contact with and how they in turn spread that paranoia onward.  Her friend (Jane Adams, Poltergeist, a kooky bright spot at times) passes it to her brother (Chris Messina, Cake), his wife (Kate Aselton, Bombshell), and their friends (Tunde Adebimpe, Marriage Story and Jennifer Kim, Spider-Man: Homecoming) before handing it over to a few other familiar faces that must have owed Seimetz a favor.  How this extended circle deals copes with their purported demise runs the gamut from the cruel to the criminal — not the kind of material that’s exciting to watch or that gives the usually talented performers much to work with.

It all comes back to Amy, though, and while Seimetz attempts to give an origin story to the fear that drives Amy to panic it’s covered in so much heavy-handed missteps in eye-crossing cinematography drowned out by an often ear-plugging score that you can barely pay attention.  So whatever larger message Seimetz is trying to convey gets lost amidst a clamor of her own making.  The same goes for the performances which range from the zombified (Sheil) to the whacked-out (Michelle Rodriguez, Widows) and in the end it’s Adams who likely comes out the best because the entire utterly bizarre film plays right into her wheelhouse of strange characters moving through this earthly plane.  Reportedly Seimetz used her salary from Pet Sematary to fund this picture and you wonder if the money wouldn’t have been better spent on an actual cemetery for pets instead of this eye-rolling folderol.

I can already see this being heralded a triumph by those bored on the straight-forward offerings available these past few months, but I saw no real artistry on display, unfortunately.  I felt like I should have responded differently but whatever takeaway I was meant to be left with vanishes among the punishing noise.  Even looking at the movie as metaphor for anxiety or grappling with the inner monologue of one’s own mortality lets the film off a hook it deserves to be hitched to.  So it’s not as if the intent wasn’t clear…it’s the execution that left me completely at odds with nearly everything else the film brought to the table, rendering it unwatchable in my book.  Its impenetrable notions of gloom and doom may send you scrambling toward your cure-all for the blues but it makes you wonder…when life is already so tenuous, why add more inexplicable horror to your plate if you don’t have to?  She Dies Tomorrow but pick something else today.

Movie Review ~ Birds of Prey

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The Facts:

Synopsis: After splitting with the Joker, Harley Quinn joins superheroes Black Canary, Huntress and Renee Montoya to save a young girl from an evil crime lord.

Stars: Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Pérez, Chris Messina, Ewan McGregor, Ella Jay Basco, Ali Wong

Director: Cathy Yan

Rated: R

Running Length: 109 minutes

TMMM Score: (7/10)

Review: In the summer of 2016, hopes were high that Suicide Squad could help bring back the DC Universe from extinction after the disappointing reception of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which was released earlier that year.  Seems that critics and audiences that had come to like the flashy spark of the Marvel Cinematic Universe weren’t grooving to the darker tones and turns DC was taking and while I personally thought BvS was far better than it got credit for, even I had to admit that the world needed to snap out of its mellow dankness.  Trouble was, the people behind Suicide Squad (and, likely, studio execs) course-corrected too much (largely after the fact) and delivered an awful tire-fire of a comic book movie…and made it PG-13 on top of it all.

If there was one thing that emerged victorious from the rubble of that failed effort (which is getting an overhaul reboot in 2021) it was Margot Robbie’s take on Harley Quinn, the Joker’s main-squeeze.  Robbie brought just the right amount of self-effacing fun and tongue-in-cheek cheekiness to the film, giving off the impression she was the only one who really understood what kind of movie she was in.  It definitely set the stage for her full-blown arrival to the big leagues the next year with her Oscar-nominated turn in I, Tonya followed by her regal showing for 2018’s Mary Queen of Scots.  After dominating 2019 with lauded parts in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood and nabbing another Oscar nom for Bombshell, she’s back to make good on a deal that was sealed shortly after Suicide Squad opened to big business and stellar notices for her…a spin-off featuring Harley and a new group of female superheroes.

I admit, I first heard about this sequel while Suicide Squad was fairly fresh in my memory and I just wasn’t on board.  While I liked Robbie in the movie I didn’t find myself eager to revisit this take on Gotham City if it was going to be the same tone and annoying approach.  My dial wasn’t turned any more to the positive side when the full title was revealed: Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).  I mean…must we?  Thankfully, we aren’t required to use the full title when discussing the film so Birds of Prey this one will be forever more.  Even hearing some decent buzz from those that got an early look didn’t totally convince me.

Well…when I’m wrong I’ll say I’m wrong and I’m wrong…a little bit.  The first ten minutes of Birds of Prey is exactly the kind of obnoxious experience I feared it would be.  Crazy edits, arch characters, voice over narration that felt like it was written by a fourth grader.  Then, just as I was settling in for a rough ride the film, written by Christina Hodson and directed by Cathy Yan, suddenly came alive and decided to find its own voice and that’s when things started to get interesting.  Sure, it maintains most of the elements that make it easily identifiable as a comic book movie but it strips away anything (and anyone) extraneous and focuses simply on the characters.  Don’t worry, this isn’t a Taxi Driver-esque character-study like Joker but it hits many of the same beats…just with more flair.

Harley Quinn (Robbie, The Wolf of Wall Street) has officially broken up with “Mr. J” and does so explosively (literally).  Without his protection she becomes a prime target for members of the Gotham City underworld that have been waiting to get back at her…but catching her is only half the battle.  Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor, Doctor Sleep) finds this out when he nabs Harley and is about to have his henchman Zsasz (Chris Messina, Live by Night) send her to that great circus in the sky until she sweet talks her way into a deal to get him a priceless diamond from a young  street-wise pickpocket (Ella Jay Basco) in police custody.  Finding that girl is a cinch for Harley (a police station breakout is a highlight of the film, one  many impressive action sequences) but she isn’t the only one with an interest in the teen.  There’s Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez, The Dead Don’t Die) a Gotham City detective working with Sionis’ driver Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) to get the jewel and save the urchin and the hooded Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, 10 Cloverfield Lane) whose own vested interest crisscrosses with all involved.

Much like she did with her script for Bumblebee, Hodson injects the film with female empowerment without laying it on thick like you’ve seen it before.  Working in tandem with Yan’s smart visual eye, once Birds of Prey sheds its slimy opening layer and finds its own fun it never stops until the fireball of a finale set at a rundown boardwalk amusement park. Kudos to the production design here…a truly imaginative funhouse was created for the battle royale that closes the picture.  I also appreciated that while the film wasn’t restricted to a PG-13 rating, Yan doesn’t take her R and run with it either…this is a movie that has violence but uses it in wise and, dare I say, fun ways.

Having more time to dig into Harley, Robbie sharpens her rough edges a bit more and that’s sometimes fun, other times a bit grating.  Like I said, it gets better as the movie goes along but the character is inherently meant to be on the insufferable side…but what makes her such a great character is that you still like her even though she’s bad.  And Robbie gets both those sides of the character right.  If there’s one thing Robbie is good at, it’s knowing when to share the spotlight.  It’s the sign of a confident star (and make no doubt about it, Robbie is a bona fine A-list movie star) who can yield the stage to others so they can shine and shine they do.  Perez is in rare form as a dedicated detective who has played by the rules and watched others with less scruples pass her by.  Skilled at comedy, Perez isn’t often asked to be on the more dramatic side and she ably holds up her end of things.  Surprisingly, Winstead’s role is smaller than you’d think, with the Huntress not having much screen time until the final ¼ when her presence is all but required.  I enjoyed Basco’s modern taken on a wide-eyed Artful Dodger and you’re either going to love what McGregor is doing or be completely perplexed.  For me, I loved it in all its slithery nastiness.  I sort of get where Messina was going in his laid back approach to the knuckles and muscle sidekick but think his performance is more Suicide Squad territory.  The one to really look out for is Smollett-Bell who sings up a storm and kicks butt like a pro.  Appearing in film/TV since she was a child, this feels like Smollett-Bell’s true arrival to adult roles and she’s undeniably one of the best things about the film.

It’s already known Robbie will be back for the Suicide Squad reboot next year but we’ll have to wait and see what’s next for the rest of the Birds of Prey.  I think this first outing is absolutely worth the flight time and would welcome another adventure if the same team was brought together again.  It can’t be a coincidence that the most successful DC Comic movies have been female centered and directed by women, right?  With Wonder Woman being the spark that kept the lights on at the studio and this one impressing with its wild style, here’s hoping Wonder Woman 1984 shows everyone that we need to keep letting the women run this world.

Movie Review ~ Live by Night

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A group of Boston-bred gangsters set up shop in balmy Florida during the Prohibition era, facing off against the completion and the Klu Klux Klan.

Stars: Ben Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Sienna Miller, Elle Fanning, Chris Messina, Chris Cooper, Anthony Michael Hall

Director: Ben Affleck

Rated: R

Running Length: 128 minutes

Trailer Review: Here

TMMM Score: (6/10)

Review: I’m not going to go into the strange vitriol directed at March’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice but will say that had Live by Night received a larger release in 2016, it would have been the second most mis-understood Ben Affleck film of the year.

There’s going to be a lot of people that don’t like this movie and maybe for good reason.  It’s an uneven throwback picture that feels comfortable in its gangster era trappings and broadly drawn characters several tiny degrees removed from Dick Tracy-esque caricatures.  It has about twelve endings with only the first three being the least bit satisfying and its director/star traipses around in an array of unintentionally humorous XXL zoot suits and wide brimmed fedoras locking lips with two very different broads.  Pushing the limits of two hours, it’s slow (but steady) and a far cry from the slow burn films Affleck has directed previously.

So why the moderately high score, you may ask?  Gosh…I just liked it…flaws and all.  I’m a big believer in just going with your gut and not letting films like these stew too long in the brain.  My advice would be to catch Live by Night when you’re in a forgiving mood and aren’t looking to have your socks totally knocked off.  Had Affleck (Gone Girl) not directed as well as starred in this and had it arrived three or four years ago this might have gone down a bit better because the expectations wouldn’t be quite so high.

Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (an author Affleck has adapted before in Gone Baby Gone), it’s a relatively straight-forward tale of a Depression era small-time crook lured by love into a war between an Irish gangster and an Italian Mafioso.  Overseeing a rum-running business during Prohibition, Affleck balances making his boss a mountain of cash while plotting revenge on his enemy for a betrayal years earlier.  Oh…and there’s a minor subplot involving the KKK that feels judiciously lifted from another Lehane tome.

With its big budget and handsome production, there’s little question the movie should have been better but what’s there isn’t anything to cry over, either.  Affleck doesn’t quite have the emotional well the role calls for but he gives it, as usual, his best effort.  It’s Chris Messina (Cake), with fuzzy eyebrows and gnarled up teeth as Affleck’s short fused sidekick, that kept me wondering how the movie would have been had Messina been given the chance to star.  Alas, from all accounts this was Affleck’s passion project and we’re too far along into the picture when we realize the casting snafu.

The supporting cast fares better than our leading man, though.  Brendan Gleeson (Edge of Tomorrow) finds several nice moments as Affleck’s law enforcing father and as Affleck’s love interest, Zoe Saldana (Out of the Furance) feels like an equal match to her partner.  Chris Cooper (The Company You Keep) and Elle Fanning (The Neon Demon) are father and daughter, and while both eventually find some focus they struggle mightily with the tone of the picture for most of the film.  Surprisingly, it’s Sienna Miller (Foxcatcher) that leaves the most lasting impact…but I’m not totally convinced it wasn’t her robust Irish brogue or her unnerving porcelain doll make-up in her final scene that caused her to remain so prominent in my memory.

Bound to come and go with so many other films for grown-ups building on the strong word of mouth this one isn’t destined to gather, Live by Night may be a minor infraction on Affleck’s so far so good resume but it’s not a totally wasted effort.

Movie Review ~ Cake

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Claire becomes fascinated by the suicide of a woman in her chronic pain support group while grappling with her own, very raw personal tragedy.

Stars: Jennifer Aniston, Felicity Huffman, Sam Worthington, Anna Kendrick, Adriana Barraza, Chris Messina, William H. Macy. Britt Robertson

Director: Daniel Barnz

Rated: R

Running Length: 102 minutes

TMMM Score: (7/10)

Review: Though she’s getting a lot of recognition for her dramatic turn in Cake, I’m wondering if the masses have forgotten that this isn’t Jennifer Aniston’s first trip to the non-comedic side of films…but it may be her best. OK…so maybe films like The Good Girl and Derailed didn’t afford Aniston to truly carry a film with some weight behind it but they did show that there was more to her than that 90s show she was on and her twice yearly visits to the multiplex with a romantic comedy in tow.

Where Aniston seems to excel (and thrive) is with roles that are the exact opposite of how people see her. With other actors, that can come off as merely trying to pull a fast one on fans in a display of false supposed dexterity but in Aniston’s case you get the sense that she has real depth waiting to be tapped.

As Claire, Aniston (Wanderlust, We’re the Millers) finds that raw edge and runs with it, elevating the film in the process. For a movie about suicide, chronic illness, divorce, substance abuse, loss of a child, and depression there’s often the relief of a welcome promise of redemption around every corner. True, Claire fails to recognize these moments and continues on in pain and cynicism but as time goes on we see that she’s coming around.

Opening with a support group for chronic pain discussing the recent suicide of a member (Anna Kendrick, Into the Woods), Claire seems to be the only one unwilling to play along with the namby-pamby kumbaya-ness of the exercise. Obviously considering suicide once or twice herself, Claire becomes interested in the family the young mother left behind, particularly the husband (Sam Worthington, Man on a Ledge) that hasn’t dealt with his grief. Between popping pills and discouraging her well-meaning housekeeper (Adriana Barraza, Thor) from interfering with her wallowing, Claire gains a new perspective on where her life is taking her.

Though the premise of the film seems simple, there are a lot of complexities into the relationships featured onscreen. Barely able to stand up straight for long periods of time, Claire finds solace in random encounters with handymen and calls on her UCLA-trained law education to sweet-talk her doctor into yet another prescription of the pain meds she downs like candy. Worthington and Aniston have a nice rapport as they both flesh out characters in different stages of the acceptance of loss of a loved one.

The film is best, however, in its scenes between Aniston and Barraza. Oscar nominated for her work in Babel, Barraza quietly steals the majority of her scenes right out from under Aniston. For all of the Academy Award buzz surrounding Aniston’s work here, it’s really Barraza that was snubbed for more widespread recognition. There’s an empathy Barraza displays for Aniston’s character suggesting a mother/child relationship more than an employee/employer one. Though they bicker frequently, when push comes to shove both women stand up for one another in moving displays of emotional support.

I usually walk into these types of movies with the knowledge from experience that someone will start off one way and be a changed individual by the time of the final fadeout but with Cake I was never sure where it would all end. Of course we know how it should end but do we really want everything wrapped up in a ribbon as we head to our cars and into the world outside the movie theater?   A slice of life film that’s fairly filling, Cake may not have snagged an Oscar nom for Aniston (though she did get SAG and Golden Globe nominations) but it reaffirmed that she’s an actress worthy of more of these types of roles.