Tag Archives: Samuel Goldwyn Films

Movie Review ~ Aline

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The Facts:

Synopsis: The youngest of a hardworking French-Canadian couple’s 14 children is propelled to global music superstardom in this fictional musical dramedy, freely inspired by the life of Céline Dion.
Stars: Valérie Lemercier, Sylvain Marcel, Danielle Fichaud, Roc LaFortune, Antoine Vézina, Jean-Noël Brouté
Director: Valérie Lemercier
Rated: PG-13
Running Length: 128 minutes
Trailer Review: Here
TMMM Score: (8/10)
Review: I remember the exact moment I heard there was a movie gathering buzz ahead of its debut at Cannes inspired by the life of everyone’s favorite power chanteuse, Céline Dion. I was listening to a podcast, and the words “Céline,” “Dion,” and “biopic” were said, and I blacked out. When I came to, there were some brief details mentioned that I didn’t entirely take in fully, something about how the star was playing the role, but it was mostly centered on the snark being directed toward the just-released trailer for Aline. I didn’t even wait for the podcast to end. This news was too important to delay. I gathered my wits, set myself up in front of my crystal clear 4K OLED TV, and fired up YouTube to watch Aline’s first look.

I’m one of those who needs a little bit of time to take in something the first time I see it. I find it challenging to blurt out complete declarative statements right away; I need to get a few more views under my belt. With Aline, I knew, I just knew, that it was going to be my kind of film. As strange as the approach to telling Dion’s life is, not to mention how plum cuckoo, its method of execution winds up being, leave your preconceived notions at the door. This film is a case where no preamble descriptor can fully prepare you for an energy wave that hits you when the movie begins. That same jet force carries you for the next 128 minutes until a finale that had me on my feet.   

There was no way Dion or her team would allow a movie based on her life to be made without some strong arm of control, so famous French star Valérie Lemercier decided to go a different route. Using Dion’s life as a muse and taking on the structure of a standard biopic, Lemercier and co-writer Brigitte Buc have wound up with a condensed tale of a natural-born talent’s rise to fame. In Aline, we watch her humble roots as one of 14 children born to a family of gifted musicians to becoming a worldwide celebrity selling out shows for years in Las Vegas. Along the way, the singer (here called Aline Dieu) falls in love with her manager Guy-Claude Kamar (Sylvain Marcel), attends the Oscars, yearns for children, and struggles to free herself from an image imposed on her by an opinionated mother and a demanding fanbase. 

Sounds pretty average, right? Ah, but wait. We haven’t gotten to the exciting twist yet. Here’s the hook that director, co-writer, and star Valérie Lemercier uses that is throwing some potential views off. The adult Lemercier (58 as of this writing) portrays Aline at every stage of life, from childhood to the present. Through a mixture of effects, costumes, and old-fashioned movie magic, many of these moments are convincingly done, even when she’s playing a small child. To answer your question, yes, it does take a bit to get used to its weirdness. You can tell it’s an adult playing a child, but the vision of Lemercier’s de-aged face on a small body somehow works all the same. The more I accepted it, the easier I found myself giving over to other aspects of the film that also colored outside the lines of an expected Dion biopic.

Favorite moments of Dion’s life are created, but only just so. There’s her big Oscar moment singing the theme song from Titanic, but on a much less regal scale. Dion’s hit songs are played throughout, with Victoria Sio providing the singing voice, but not all are presented in chronological order. So, you have a song playing at her wedding that hadn’t been written yet and other anomalies that keep the film hovering at that high concept fantasy level (and likely out of reach for Dion’s lawyers), which helps propel the movie forward. It’s only at the top of the last thirty minutes, when Lemercier and Buc add a completely fictionalized scene in Vegas, that the film loses some of its charms, albeit briefly.

Lemercier surprised many recently when she won the Best Actress award at the 47th Annual César Awards, France’s highest honor in acting. Suddenly, the film that started as a joke on a podcast was getting the respect it honestly deserves. Considering all that Lemercier has put into the film and turning in a deeply committed, sincere, and overall, just damn well-acted performance, she’s already riding high on my best of the year list. It’s a performance that sticks with you long after the film has finished…and what a note to go out on. The finale is so simple but filled with the power most movies only imagine they could muster that late in the game. If you made it to that point and weren’t knocked out by her work, I don’t know how you couldn’t be convinced by what she does in those few minutes.

I’m excited this is finally out for more people to see because Aline is a movie that will thrive as more viewers have the opportunity to discover it. If there is any justice, Lemercier’s name can stay on the forefront of people’s minds for the next nine months and gain her awards consideration on our shores because it’s the type of gutsy work that should be recognized. Don’t miss this one. If you’re on the fence, hop on off and take a look – you’ll be happy you did. As Dion herself sang…”What do you say to taking chances?”

The Silver Bullet ~ Aline

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Synopsis: The life story of Canadian singing sensation Aline Dieu.

Release Date:  January 21, 2022

Thoughts:  It was back in June when I heard there was a “Celine Dion biopic” premiering at Cannes and let me tell you I literally dropped what I was doing the moment the first trailer arrived shortly thereafter.  I didn’t post anything about it when it opened at the festival to some surprisingly positive reviews but now that it is arriving in theaters in January, I think it’s time to share the wealth of Aline, the ‘fiction freely inspired by the life of Celine Dion’.

I’d be so interested to read more about the logistics of using Dion’s life story and her music but not her name or the names of those in her life.  I’m at least glad that writer/director/star Valérie Lemercier’s approach appears to be one of genuine sincerity and not mocking the French-Canadian who has been such an easy target over her amazing career trajectory.  It’s an odd way in, that’s for sure, but I think it looks completely bizarre in the best way possible.  You better believe I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open for this one the moment I can see it because as a longtime fan of Dion I’m truly fascinated in what this film has to offer.

Movie Review ~ Dreamcatcher (2021)

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A masked killer terrorizes a disc jockey and a group of friends at a drug-fueled underground music festival.

Stars: Niki Koss, Zachary Gordon, Travis Burns, Blaine Kern III, Olivia Sui, Emrhys Cooper, Elizabeth Posey, Nazanin Mandi, Adrienne Wilkinson, Lou Ferrigno Jr.

Director: Jacob Johnston

Rated: NR

Running Length: 108 minutes

TMMM Score: (2/10)

Review: You can’t even blame Scream at this point for any masked killer movie that has a cast of young know-it-alls that fall prey to a knife-wielding psycho.  After that blockbuster 1996 film arrived, giving the teen slashers a nice jolt of electricity, countless other copycats attempted to emulate screenwriter Kevin Williamson’s finely tuned dialogue and clever skewering of (aside from unfortunate victims) the tenets of the horror genre.  Few came close and over time the competition began to cannibalize itself so that each film started to become its own parody.  Now that we’re past the small peak of remakes and reboots, it appears the slasher film is on the rise again and aside from a few recent winners such as Hunter Hunter and The Stylist most have been decidedly thumbs down.

You can add the dank and dreary Dreamcatcher to the rubbish bin of also-ran Scream wannabes, an unfortunate fate to be sure in light of a director that comes armed with an impressive resume as a visual artist and at least three performances that hint at the kind of fun I think everyone was going for.  Alas, everyone is let down by writer/director Jacob Johnston’s confounding screenplay that changes the rules at whim and has so much eye-rolling dialogue you should watch the film with your head titled back just in case yours fall out unexpectedly.

While it kicks off with a nasty bit of prologue business, dispatching a character you’ll wish stuck around longer when you see who else winds up making it until the end, things are torpedoed quickly in the very next scene between friends Jake (Zachary Gordon, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone) and Pierce (Niki Kloss, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) as they enjoy a movie night in.  Long-time pals that moved into the friend zone quicker than Jake would have liked, their discussion sounds like the malarky written to make people sound like they have a point of view, though not like anything a human being actually says.  It’s phony baloney and it instantly takes you out of the scene, making you think about the actors going through the motions rather than establishing their characters.

Soon joined by Pierce’s sister Ivy (Elizabeth Posey) and her friend Brecken (Emrhys Cooper), both in town for a visit and looking for a night out, the four wind up at an exclusive party where DJ Dremcatcher (Travis Burns) is appearing.  Now, I guess it’s still a big deal to hear what tunes a DJ is playing because let me tell you, Pierce flips her lid when she hears DJ Dreamcatcher is going to be there.  This all sets up how she winds up going backstage before his show where something, um, unfortunate happens, setting into motion 24 hours of mayhem for Pierce and her friends.  As they struggle to keep a secret they shouldn’t remotely be holding back from telling in the first place, they become the target for a omnipresent figure in a creepy mask that manages to turn up at the most inopportune times to, y’know, kill them and stuff.  If only they’d kill them before they had a chance to get through more of Johnston’s crushingly terrible dialogue.

Sensing a straightforward killer film isn’t enough to satisfy experienced genre fans, Johnston resorts to a late breaking twist surrounding the final reveal that’s so dopey you’ll wish he had kept going with the stale take he’d been running with up until then.   This is all assuming you’re even paying attention by that point after all the yapping throughout the overlong run time.  Dragging itself through 108 very long minutes, the movie only finds a pulse when Adrienne Wilkinson is onscreen as Josephine, DJ Dreamcatcher’s scheming agent.  Finding the right balance in delivering Johnston’s campy one-liner takedowns of Pierce and her friends or any number of guests at a launch party, Wilkinson could have taken the part up five more notches and pushed the acting over the top, but she wisely keeps it low-key and makes the role much more memorable.  It’s always better to play the villain when there’s someone else worse running amok and Wilkinson pretty much walks away with the movie.  There’s also some good energy to be found from Olivia Sui as, you guessed it, another female that enjoys making life difficult for those around her.  I’m not sure what this says about the movie, Johnston, or myself but the best acting in the movie and the most appealing performers just happen to be those that have some snap to them.

The rest of the cast, including a specially credited Lou Ferrigno Jr. who after watching the movie I still couldn’t pick out in a line-up if you paid me, are mostly forgettable and likely will want you to forget they were in this too.  I mean, would you want to be Posey in a few years when she’s the star on some streaming show having Jimmy Fallon playing the clip where she’s somberly reciting Shakespeare and then recounting the time she played Lady Macbeth while her sister played one of the witches…all in the middle of an evening when her friends are dying around her?  She’s trying not to burst out crying while we’re stifling a laugh.  It’s just one example of several moments in Johnston’s screenplay where things are played so deadly serious it comes off as comedy instead.

With a huge list of credits on the visual design side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you’d have thought Johnston’s film would at least have some flair to it but it’s not even interesting to look at.  There aren’t any unique camera tricks or impressively rendered sequences, even a Marvel movie that is largely using worlds created by CGI has some sense of its surroundings.  Dreamcatcher doesn’t even bother to establish time or place.  It’s a jumbled mess of a movie.

Movie Review ~ Dating Amber

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A closeted gay teen and his lesbian counterpart pretend to be a couple to avoid suspicion.

Stars: Fionn O’Shea, Lola Petticrew, Barry Ward, Sharon Horgan, Simone Kirby, Lauryn Canny, Emma Willis

Director: David Freyne

Rated: NR

Running Length: 92 minutes

TMMM Score: (5/10)

Review:  Whether we like it or not, those that lay out their opinions on film for all the world to read are bound to be caught in a fickle situation or two.  I’m as guilty as the next person of loving the easy-breezy romantic comedies that don’t ask too much of the viewer just as much as I crave those brainless action blockbusters that are made for chomping popcorn.  These movies are easy to identify (and, thus, write-off if you so choose) but it’s similar-themed fare that often can bear the burden of more harsh scrutiny.  Films such as these may seem rather conventional but look carefully and you can spot an aspiration that wasn’t met that needs to be called out.

Sadly, one of the newest examples of this is the import Irish comedy Dating Amber.  Here’s one that checked all the boxes on my list for a charming weekend watch but wound up being a disappointing rehash of ideas already brought to the screen.  I’m always onboard for a comedy that goes against the norm and defies expectations, so when I plunk down in front of one that is earnest as all get out and, it must be said, made with the most noble of intentions, I still have to give it its fair shake.  Despite an appealing cast and subject matter that usually gets short shrift in the romantic realm, writer/director David Freyne opts for the obvious when a surprise or two will do and ends up with the five words no LGBTQ film wants to be classified as: Just Another Ordinary Gay Movie.

The oldest child of a military man (Barry Ward, Extra Ordinary) and a stay-at-home mom (Sharon Horgan, Game Night), Eddie (Fionn O’Shea, The Aftermath) is doing everything he can to repress his gay feelings that are becoming too big to ignore.  His friends egg him on to an embarrassing encounter with the loosest girl in their Irish countryside school, an experience that backfires on him and only puts a larger spotlight on his lack of interest in the opposite sex.  Watching all of this unfold is Amber (Lola Petticrew), a popular target for the boys in her class to make crass jokes about and to be harassed by the girls for her supposed lesbian leanings.  Living in a trailer park with her mom after her dad committed suicide, she’s saving up money to head to London by renting one of the empty trailers on her property by the hour to any of her horny classmates that have the cash.

Tired of being bullied and trusting her gut, Amber approaches Eddie and makes him a proposition.  Since they’re both gay (though he claims he’s not), why don’t they pretend to date.  That will squash the daily taunting at school and help them get through the final months before they can truly begin to live their best lives.  Under the guise of doing it to help her, Eddie agrees and the two start their faux relationship which burgeons into just the kind of platonic friendship both had been needing.  Though their romantic lives still need some help, they find some semblance of normalcy in the partnership of another person that understands how the other feels.  However, the more Amber uses this safe space to learn to be happy with accepting her sexuality, the less Eddie follows suit, leading to an emotional rift that threatens their ideal arrangement.

Countless high school films over the years have dealt with these secret relationship/friendship machinations and we all know where they’re heading.  That Dating Amber follows such a standard trajectory while only occasionally setting a pinky toe into new territory is a bummer because there’s some rich emotional soil that could be uncovered here.  Instead, Freyne gives us another school filled with teens that are obnoxious homophobic horndogs and at least one parent that feels like they’ve been waiting their whole life to have a gay child and has had their “I accept you” speech well-rehearsed.  It’s inevitable the teens will have some sort of heated confrontation in a school hallway and the parent will get a late-night teary moment to offer their support…we’re just checking our watches for when it will occur.  It should be said that not enough films go into the relationship between gay men and women with as much mirth.  Wisely, Freyne makes these showcase moments meaning they are memorable but infrequent.

Perhaps Freyne just has too much going on that took away from the people we were here to see.  The story is about the evolution of both Eddie and Amber getting to a new level of love for themselves, but some side story always seems to be getting in the way.  Horgan and Ward are strong actors but the fact their marriage was in shambles had little to do with their son and seemed like a plot thread dropped from Horgan’s Military Wives from earlier this year.  Exploring Amber’s home life tied in a bit more, but lack of development of this area kept it from resonating, which is a shame because Petticrew and Simone Kirby (The Shadow of Violence) as her mother had some good interplay.  I’ve really enjoyed O’Shea in Hulu’s Normal People (where he played a real a-hole) as well as Handsome Devil (a much better LGBTQ pic showing a less typical coming-out story) but here his bundle of nerves got old quickly.   Also, it got aggravating that Eddie’s given so many passes for his poor behavior and violent outbursts without paying much of a realistic price that I began to care less about his ultimate journey.

Originally titled Beards, Dating Amber should have been better than it is considering the scope of possibilities open to the filmmakers.  The entire film I had the nagging feeling like I’d seen this all before.  It wasn’t that it’s an exact carbon copy of other, better, films, it’s that almost all of its choices are so textbook that you could choose any high school romantic comedy (gay or straight) off the shelf and find the same characters.  I’m glad movies like this are getting made and hope they continue to arrive with regularity…I just hope they aren’t so, you know, regular.

Movie Review ~ Triggered

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Terror strikes when nine campers wake up with bombs strapped to their chests, all with varying times on their countdown clocks.

Stars: Liesl Ahlers, Reine Swart, Steven John Ward, Suraya Rose Santos, Cameron Scott, Russell Crous, Craig Urbani, Kayla Privett, Michael Lawrence Potter, Paige Bonnin, Sean Cameron Michael

Director: Alastair Orr

Rated: NR

Running Length: 90 minutes

TMMM Score: (6/10)

Review:  When they first premiered, I was an ardent fan of shows like Survivor and Big Brother.  In the beginning, the entertainment value of watching people trying to survive not just the situation but each other was a lot of fun but over time the chuckle factor wore off and I got to see that it was just an adult version of high school.  The popular often won out, sometimes beaten by the more clever nerd or upset by a two-faced villain.  The strategy for winning was so laid out that pretty soon contestants started winning by NOT having a strategy and the cycle began again.  Eventually, I couldn’t take the stress anymore and had to give them all up.  One thing is for sure…I would never have made it on those shows.

Watching a movie like Triggered, a South African thriller (that’s a new one!), that is premiering on demand this weekend, I was reminded of these television shows and of the fact that I’d be the first one out of the game.  Here’s an intriguing set-up on its own that’s been done in some form or another before but given a ruthless twist that elevates it from being just another recycled concept slapped onto a buzz-worthy title.  Like the nine twenty-somethings it features, Triggered is terribly shallow and obnoxious throughout yet it has a sort of perverted charm to it that makes it more watchable than you’d think and more memorable than it should have ever been.

Reuniting for a weekend in celebration of a football game, nine high school chums decide to save some cash and rough it in the woods, which is where we find them at the beginning.  Not everyone is happy about the set-up, with several of the couples already bickering and old adversaries puffing up their chests to intimidate the others.  Though they all appear to know one another well, it’s clear from their brief campfire chat in the opening moments that their long history has provided ample opportunity for bruised emotions and frustrations to build.  Plus, it appears there is a mystery from their past surrounding a fallen friend that no one wants to revisit…never a good sign.

Waking up in the middle of the night, they find themselves in a fairly peculiar situation.  All have been outfitted with suicide bombs that are set to different times, courtesy of their old high school teacher who had a son that was formerly a part of their group but died of an overdose at one of their parties. (Ah ha!  You knew that would come back into play.)  As payback for his belief that one of them deliberately killed his child, he’s suited them up with the explosives and told them that only one will get out alive.  The diabolical plan has one more cruel curveball that I’ve deliberately eliminated from the provided plot synopsis and just in case you haven’t discovered it yet, I’ll let you find out on your own.  I’ll just say it gives these friends a chance to test their loyalties to one another pretty quickly.

We don’t get much in the way of deep character introductions and seeing that the film is entirely shot at night, it takes longer than it should for director Alastair Orr to properly identify everyone.  I spent a fair amount of the film not being able to tell three of the men apart, not that the workmanlike script from David D. Jones helps Orr much.  A number of the inter-personal conflicts seem entirely surface-based and just reinforces the feeling that this generation would literally sacrifice their friends for their own advancement.  The performances run the gamut as well with some merely serviceable to very watchable like Liesl Ahlers as the mousy girlfriend of the dead boy who hasn’t ever truly recovered from the loss and Reine Swart playing the brainy one her friends like to take down a notch every time she incorporates a high falutin phrase.

Much of the film is just a lot of running around and screaming in the woods and some fairly gory sequences sprinkled throughout.  Though it’s shot well and we can see it all nicely, you do feel after a while you’ve seen that same tree in a number of supposedly different locations.  Orr seems to be most comfortable with the parts of the film with the most screen business happening, so it’s likely a good thing the film moves so quickly.  It’s a mean-spirited film, there’s no getting around that, yet I found myself more actively engaged than I expected with the final result.  I think for the film to be a greater success Triggered could have spent more time on the front end with helping us discover these characters or found a more interesting way of inserting these moments throughout the night, but almost in spite of all of this, Triggered still manages to find a comfortable bullseye.

Movie Review ~ Fisherman’s Friends

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A fast living, cynical London music executive heads to a remote Cornish village on a stag weekend where he’s pranked by his boss into trying to sign a group of shanty singing fishermen.

Stars: Daniel Mays, James Purefoy, David Hayman, Dave Johns, Sam Swainsbury, Tuppence Middleton, Noel Clarke, Christian Brassington, Maggie Steed, Jade Anouka, Meadow Nobrega

Director: Chris Foggin

Rated: PG-13

Running Length: 112 minutes

TMMM Score: (4/10)

Review: I’ve mentioned several times over the last few months that being cooped up inside and kept away from the bigger budgeted bombastic films in theaters has allowed me greater opportunity to enjoy smaller fare.  It’s been grand having no excuse to miss tiny features that could have been overlooked in weeks when the latest franchise film was gearing up for release and being offered the kind of gems I was used to discovering long after they’d found their way onto streaming platforms.  With that, I’ve also noticed the slightest loosening up of the critical approach at times, being a little too eager to overlook rough corners or treacly plot points in keeping with the spirit of positivity.

It’s movies like Fisherman’s Friends that help bring me back to reality though, films that remind you that even the best intentions have consequences and it’s perfectly ok to throw back what the cinematic sea giveth. The dam started to break with Military Wives which pushed the limits of how much forced saccharine an audience can handle but the filmmakers behind the similar true-life story found in Fisherman’s Friends run their boat ashore early on and never can get back in the water.  Though it wants to have that cheeky charm that kept The Full Monty or Calendar Girls feeling so fresh, it winds up smelling like catch of the day that’s sat in the sun too long.

On a bachelor weekend in the tiny seaside town of Port Isaac, London-based Danny (Daniel Mays, 1917) and his fellow music exec mates don’t make the best first impression on Jim (James Purefoy, John Carter), his daughter Alwyn (Tuppence Middleton, Downton Abbey), and the rest of the hard-working blue collar townspeople that frequent the local watering hole.  Loud and obnoxious, the stag party does minimal damage to the Cornish town and is about to wrap up their weekend when they hear the weekly performance of the town fishermen singing shanties by the seashore.  As a joke, his boss (a member of the bro weekend) convinces Danny he wants to sign the group to their record label and quickly leaves him stranded to figure out how to talk a bunch of gruff sea-goers into becoming the next boy band.

As you can likely guess if you’ve ever seen any movie that carried the “feel-good” label, the longer Danny stays in Port Isaac, the more he gets to know the townspeople as greater than just their prickly exterior and the less they see him as a posh snob.  Friendships are formed among unlikely comrades, romance blooms between individuals that once couldn’t stand each other, and loyalties are royally tested in a neat and tidy (if arguably overlong) package.  The triumvirate of screenwriters is made up of Nick Moorcroft, Meg Leonard and Piers Ashworth and none can help director Chris Foggin find the right key that would help the movie play a tune we haven’t heard numerous times before.

The biggest issue I had with the film is that maybe I found the group severely lacking in charm.  The first time the men raise their voices in song, the crowd onscreen seems to love it but I was left scratching my head wondering what all the fuss was about.  Not for nothing but there are a handful of scenes featuring others having the same reaction I did.  The ribald and raunchy old tyme ditties are good for a laugh but they wear thin quickly and fade from memory even faster.  I never connected with why Danny is so obsessed with pursuing them into the limelight.  It’s like hearing about a great dancer with fabulous technique only to watch someone gamely get through the Electric Slide without injuring themselves.

If the IMDb pages are to be believed, a sequel is planned for March 2021 but with the pandemic who knows if that has thrown things out of whack.  I’d have been more in favor of a documentary about the real men involved with the group instead of this hokey-pokey dramatization that sells whatever charisma they had short.  As a Sunday watch while completing the 1,000 piece puzzle that’s been gathering dust on your table, Fisherman’s Friends might be good background noise but as the main event selection for an evening’s entertainment,  you’ll be better off dropping anchor somewhere else.

Movie Review ~ To the Stars

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Under small town scrutiny, a withdrawn farmer’s daughter forges an intimate friendship with a worldly but reckless new girl in 1960s Oklahoma.

Stars: Kara Hayward, Liana Liberato, Shea Whigham, Jordana Spiro, Adelaide Clemens, Lucas Jade Zumann, Malin Åkerman, Tony Hale

Director: Martha Stephens

Rated: NR

Running Length: 109 minutes

TMMM Score: (8/10)

Review:  I open my review of the new coming-of-age drama with a familiar slap on the wrist to myself.  Yes, once again I did the film I was about to see a disservice by reading the little blurb about it first and getting to the “coming-of-age” part and doing one of those exasperated “Blerghs”.  Like a badly drawn character from the Sunday comics, my next thought bubble was, “now you’ll tell me that it’s set in the South in the 1960s”.  Sure enough….a small Oklahoma town in the 1960s is where the action of To the Stars takes place.  The one thing that intrugied me, though, is when I read the movie was shot in black and white…which I found interesting because so few movies go that route.  So let me say I was a little fraught when I started the movie and it was in full dust bowl color…a pause and a scan of the internet told me that while the movie was shot in B&W and premiered at festivals in that format, the wider release would be in color.  Huh. Ok.

All this to say that for whatever reason I came to this indie film in, how should I say it?, not the best spirit.  I recognized that, though, and promised myself to work hard at letting all that go because the movie deserved my honest feedback.  Turns out, I didn’t have to work hard at all because this is one fine film, a surprisingly moving bit of entertainment boasting genuine heartfelt performances.  Well-paced and taking the kind of turns I wasn’t expecting at the beginning, it may follow some familiar rough roads but it’s when it veers off in its own path that it really soars.

When mousy Iris Deerborne (Kara Hayward, Moonrise Kingdom) first meets fireball Maggie Richmond (Liana Liberato, Banana Split), she doesn’t know quite what to make of the new girl in town.  A gang of bullies that have found a reliable target has just stopped Iris on her way to school and Maggie isn’t aware that Iris rarely puts up a fight.  Though Maggie tries to fit in by standing out in their small town school crowd, she only connects with Iris when the two share of moment of vulnerability late at night at a pond between their houses.  A friendship blossoms where Maggie encourages Iris to come out from the shadow of her well-intentioned but wrong-headed mother (Jordana Spiro) and Iris helps Maggie tear down some of the defensive walls she’s built up, eventually revealing why her family suddenly moved to their small town.

Shannon Bradley-Colleary’s script has a languid way of developing at first, slowly letting the friendship between the two girls come center stage.  The first half perhaps spends a tad too much time involved with school politics, namely the way Iris is shunned by the cool girls who are mean to Iris just…because. (It’s a big pain point of the script that none of the antagonists are ever given any background/reason to their actions.)  In a set-up that reminded me of Muriel’s Wedding, the cool girls glom on to the ‘prettier’ Maggie, who would rather spend her time with Iris who she senses (correctly) is far better for her than they are.  Scenes with Maggie and her parents (a staid Tony Hale, Toy Story 4, and Malin Åkerman, Rock of Ages) are fairly interesting because it’s clear something is going on in the family dynamic but just what that is only comes to light later on.

What the script does provide, even in small doses, are some excellent moments of authenticity not just for the two leading ladies who are both resolutely excellent throughout but for the supporting players.  From Shea Whigham (The Quarry) as Iris’s soft-spoken and supportive father to Spiro as her boozy mother that flirts with anything that moves.  I was also quite taken with Adelaide Clemens (The Great Gatsby) as Hazel, the town hairdresser who plays a special role of comfort as the film continues.  To say more about how all of these complex characters factor into the surprising turn of events would rob the movie of some of its emotional kick but director Martha Stephens guides it all with a delicate touch.

Watching the movie, the whole black and white business was always on the forefront of my mind.  At first, the wide shots of the open Oklahoma prairie land seemed like the perfect way to utilize the film stock drained of color but quite a lot of the movie is set at night.  I actually think the decision to flip to color was the right one because seeing that a few major events happen in the darkness, it especially helps as the film moves toward its bittersweet conclusion.  A wise choice for a wise movie.  Don’t miss this one – it’s one of those I think you could easily recommend to others.

 

Movie Review ~ Endings, Beginnings

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A Los Angeles woman unlocks the secrets to her life after meeting two handsome best friends at a party.

Stars: Shailene Woodley, Jamie Dornan, Sebastian Stan, Wendie Malick, Matthew Gray Gubler, Lindsay Sloane, Ben Esler, Shamier Anderson, Kyra Sedgwick

Director: Drake Doremus

Rated: NR

Running Length: 110 minutes

TMMM Score: (4/10)

Review:  When I was growing up, if I disappointed them the most crushing thing my parents could say to me was “We love you, we just don’t like you right now.”  Even though it still reaffirmed that they cared for me (and my parents were awesome and endlessly supportive through my many flights of fancy) and highlighted that my actions had an impact on how people perceived me, losing that bit of luster even for a moment was heartbreaking.  While movie characters aren’t quite on the same level as letting down your family, I found that phrase popping up often while watching Endings, Beginnings.  I truly like most of the actors in the film, I just didn’t like any of their characters.

It’s the story of Daphne (Shailene Woodley, The Fault in Our Stars), a California artist moving back into the pool house of her sister and brother-in-law after breaking up with her latest boyfriend.  You get the sense she made the decision to end things but is already having second thoughts because she can’t quite get him (or a hazy encounter with another unidentified man) out of her mind for much of the film.  Deciding to go cold turkey on men and alcohol for six months, she looks for work but finds it hard to stay away from her vices for long.

That’s when she meets two men in quick succession.  Jack (Jamie Dornan, Fifty Shades Freed) is a slick success story that charms the side of Daphne that craves stability while the handsomely rumpled Frank (Sebastain Stan, I, Tonya) meets her needs for satisfying love without deeper emotion.  Both, on their own, might not be all that she is looking for but together they provide a yin and yang that leaves her feeling whole.  Writer/director Drake Doremus (Like, Crazy, Equals) gives this modern love triangle a few sharp edges but the crux of the decisions Daphne has to make tend toward the soap operatic the more involved she gets with both men.

For a time, Endings, Beginnings creates a dreamy mood that invites you into Daphne’s world and that’s due in large part to Woodley’s charisma which continues to shine through.  Though she’s never been as good as she was in her star-making turn in 2011’s The Descendants (WHY didn’t she get an Oscar nomination, I ask you?), she has a good showing here even making the semi-improvised dialogue not sound like remnants from an acting class exercise.  The longer the movie goes on, though, the less you relate to the character because she stops being somebody real and morphs into a creation that could only happen in the movies.

As the men in her life, Dornan and Stan provide at least some interesting stakes for her to gamble on, even if they seem to exist only to get her to hop off the wagon of no men and no drinking.  That they actively push her to drink and don’t always respect her boundaries is a little off-putting, to be honest, and feels just a tad antiquated in a film as modern as this purports to be.  In small supporting turns (too small for my taste), Wendie Malick (Scrooged) has a few nice scenes as Daphne’s mom and the always reliable Kyra Sedgwick (Man on a Ledge) shows up as a friend in Daphne’s weekly art clutch.  I’m so used to seeing Malick playing vamp-y women that it was a nice change of pace to find her so restrained and while Sedgwick’s character seems designed only to spout sage advice and then disappear, at least she breaks up the monotony of scenes with Daphne and her men.

One more thing before I go.  I don’t know why I noticed this but the amount of smoking in this movie was absolutely obscene.  I’ve never mentioned this in any review before because it hasn’t been something that’s caught my eye but I swear I could smell smoke emanating from the screen at times because there are so many cigarettes consumed ad nauseam by Daphne, Jack, and Frank.  It’s used so much, I half expected it to be a plot device later in the movie…spoiler alert…it’s not.  I guess I just find it surprising that a filmmaker in 2020 would choose to feature this vice so prominently when it isn’t essential to any character or plot element.

For Woodley’s performance, I would give this a cautious recommendation with the caveat that the film gets markedly weaker as it goes along before completely disintegrating.  Here’s hoping Woodley gets another chance soon to play a mature character like this and can sink her teeth into a script that meets her step for step – she’s obviously willing to go the distance in her performance.  Now let’s get her something solid to work with.

Movie Review ~ Daniel Isn’t Real

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A troubled college freshman, Luke, suffers a violent family trauma and resurrects his childhood imaginary friend Daniel to help him cope.

Stars: Patrick Schwarzenegger, Miles Robbins, Sasha Lane, Hannah Marks, Mary Stuart Masterson, Chukwudi Iwuji

Director: Adam Egypt Mortimer

Rated: NR

Running Length: 96 minutes

TMMM Score: (6/10)

Review: There were times when I envied people who talked about their imaginary friend when they were growing up.  Having that special person they could converse with and share secrets sounded kind of fun…a little wacky, but fun.  I wanted to know what these “friends” looked like, were they human, did they age along with you, did they go everywhere with you?  What about when you wanted a moment to yourself?  As an only child, I wondered why I didn’t automatically get one of these because I didn’t have the built-in playmate that a sibling often brings but, sadly, I was left to my own creative ways to pass the time.  Probably for the best…I got into enough trouble on my own.  Mom and Dad, sorry again for all of my shenanigans.

In movies, imaginary friends have been featured in romps like 1996’s trite Bogus and, most famously, in 1991’s Drop Dead Fred which was filmed in my hometown (Minneapolis, MN) and showcased one of the last onscreen appearances of everyone’s dreamgirl of the ‘80s, Phoebe Cates.  Drop Dead Fred was a mischievous imp that got our leading lady into all sorts of trouble but ultimately had her best interest at heart.  He may have royally wrecked her life at the outset but it was all for the best.  In the new psychological thriller Daniel Isn’t Real, a make-believe mate wreaks similar havoc that turns far more sinister the more his true motives are revealed.

Based on a 2009 novel by Brian DeLeeuw, the film has an audacious opening that introduces us to young Luke, showing how he comes to meet up with Daniel at the scene of a violent crime.  (It’s a bit of a shock, especially considering some of the recent headline-making incidents, but it’s a highly effective way to kickstart the movie).  Becoming fast friends in spite of their unique circumstance of meeting, Daniel provides an outlet for Luke to escape the troubles at home where his mother (Mary Stuart Masterson, Fried Green Tomatoes) battles a growing mental illness.  After nearly killing his mother under Daniel’s seemingly benign influence, Luke is finally convinced to lock his friend away in a stately dollhouse where he remains trapped for the next decade.

Now a college freshman struggling with his own issues, Luke (Miles Robbins, Halloween, son of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon) returns to his family home for a visit to find his mother in a downward spiral of schizophrenia.  Under pressure with school, his family, and life in general he turns back to the one time in his life when he felt special, with Daniel.  Unlocking the dollhouse releases Daniel (Patrick Schwarzenegger, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse), who has aged into a brooding trickster more than willing to help his old friend sort out some of his current problems.  With Daniel’s assistance, Luke aces a quiz he was unprepared for, gets the confidence to talk to a girl he’s been eyeing (Hannah Marks) and even meets another girl (Sasha Lane, Hellboy) that might provide the kind of challenging love and support Daniel could never offer.  This, obviously, won’t do.  The longer Daniel is in Luke’s life the less it feels like he’s his friend and more like he’s haunting him.  As Luke eventually realizes what Daniel really is and what’s he’s up to, it becomes a fight for survival because how can you run from someone that’s a part of you?

There’s some good stuff going on in this adaptation from DeLeeuw (Paradise Hills) and director Adam Egypt Mortimer, especially in the opening half when Daniel is more of an enigma.  These early scenes when Luke is struggling with the realities of life and discussing his problems with his psychiatrist (Chukwudi Iwuji) have a nice snap to them.  Even the introduction of the adult Daniel has its interesting moments, with Schwarzenegger’s acting being just on the right side of hokey to pull off the vapid poser this creation is presenting himself to be.  I also liked any excuse to see Masterson onscreen, she was such a popular presence in the ‘80s that it’s nice to see her transition into the mom phase of her career with this complex type of motherly character.

What doesn’t seem to work for me is a dreary final forty minutes, mostly because it rests on the shoulder of Robbins and Schwarzenegger and, sorry to say it, these progeny of Hollywood royalty aren’t exactly captivating thespians.  Robbins is so non-threatening that he’d be a great person to bring home as a prom date but doesn’t convince when he’s asked to preen and sneer when he’s possessed by Daniel’s persona at one point near the finale.  Same goes for Schwarzenegger who, aside from those out of the gate scenes that work, becomes one-note (a low one) fairly fast.   Together, they’re a fairly dullsome twosome and as their escapades turn more violent, the less interesting the movie becomes because DeLeeuw and Mortimer have telegraphed from the start just how far Daniel is willing to take things.

Still, there’s something to Daniel Isn’t Real that kept it on my mind long after it was over.  This feeling of not being able to get away from a destructive inner demon that nags at you is relatable and I appreciated when DeLeeuw and Mortimer explored those internal struggles.  I mean, it’s sometimes a bit literal but there are moments when the suggestion is more effective than the presentation and that’s what sets this one apart.  There are some elements of The Cell that enter the picture near the end, visuals included, and while the budget can’t quite support those aspirations I appreciated the attempt at keeping our eyes fixed onto something unique.  I wonder what this would have been like with stronger leads, though.  If we don’t care about the character going through this turmoil, what’s the point?

Movie Review ~ Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles

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The Facts:

Synopsis: The origin story behind one of Broadway’s most beloved musicals and its creative roots in early 1960s New York, when “tradition” was on the wane as gender roles, sexuality, race relations and religion were evolving.

Stars: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Austin Pendleton, Fran Lebowitz, Michael Bernardi, Jerry Bock, Danny Burstein, Joey Grey, Josh Mostel, Harvey Fierstein, Topol, Harold Prince

Director: Max Lewkowicz

Rated: PG-13

Running Length: 92 minutes

TMMM Score: (8/10)

Review: A funny thing happens to me anytime I hear someone bring up the musical Fiddler on the Roof. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I stop in my tracks, get completely serious, and say “I. Love. That. Show.” It’s not being dramatic, it’s not overstating the truth…it’s just fact. For a while I used to say it was my guilty pleasure show…until I realized that I’d never seen a bad production of it and there were quite a few others than shared in my sentiment. In the world of theater, it seems that you either love Fiddler, you were in Fiddler, or both.

For the last 55 years, the Tony winning show inspired by the tales of Sholem Aleichem with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein hasn’t gone a single day without being performed somewhere in the world. Ponder that for a moment. Every day, for over a half century, somewhere on earth, an audience experienced the musical set in a Russian shtetl in 1905 about a milkman named Tevye and his family. A little over a month ago, I caught the new Broadway tour of the 2015 revival of the show and fell in love with it all over again. Yes, the first act is longer than most Adam Sandler movies (100 minutes) and by this point there’s hardly a person in the world that hasn’t “deedle deedle dum’ed” their way through a shower rendition of ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ but the show continues to work like gangbusters.

Inspired to learn a bit more about the show, I tracked down a copy of Barbara Isenberg’s excellent 2015 book ‘Tradition!: The Highly Improbable, Ultimately Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Story of Fiddler on the Roof, the World’s Most Beloved Musical’ right around the same time I got wind of this documentary. Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles is part creation story and part time capsule, showing not just the genesis and lasting impact of the musical but also the cultural climate it sprung out of. While many of the stories from the book are repeated in the movie, both have their own golden nuggets that make them a must for any Fiddler fan.

Clearly, the admirers are plentiful and endure along with the show, including a plethora of familiar stars of stage and screen that are interviewed by director Max Lewkowicz. Using archive interviews with the creators (Stein and Bock have passed away) and having family members fill in some narrative gaps, the film is often a straight-forward ‘this is how we made it’ charting of how the piece developed. Those interested in Broadway history will find many recognizable names mentioned as the show went from a poorly reviewed tryout in Washington D.C. to becoming a global phenomenon that continues to sell out theaters whenever it plays in whatever language it’s been adapted to.  Yet before we get to how the writers came up with the songs and how director/choreographer Jerome Robbins devised the inventive dances, Lewkowicz takes audiences on a journey through the early ’60s and the mood the country was in when the Fiddler crew was setting up shop.  It’s valuable to see where the authors were coming from and what might have influenced them, not just in that point in history but in their own personal remembrances.

While the book ultimately has some more dishy asides about the shenanigans that went on offstage and original Tevye Zero Mostel’s tendency toward the unpredictable onstage, the documentary has its own share of memorable moments. I found the audio clips from the first school production to be incredibly moving. As the show was still playing its original run on Broadway, a inner city NYC school was granted the rights by the creators as a way to demonstrate that, though the show was about Jews, its message was universal. The production was met with protests by the religious on both sides, each wonder the appropriateness of someone outside of the Jewish heritage going through a show that has several faith-based observances serving as key moments.  Hearing the young cast sing the music is remarkable. Try to stave off the chills.

Starting out strong by going into a fairly detailed deep dive into the politics and temperature in place when the musical was first created, Lewkowicz stretches things a bit too far by looping in everyone’s favorite Pulitzer Prize winner, Lin-Manual Miranda (Mary Poppins Returns) for some on-camera time. Now, I’m fan of what Miranda did for Broadway with Hamilton and hold that piece of theater up as the highest of high bars, but did we really need his appearance talking about his wedding reception video that went viral (a well-orchestrated viral, I might add) where he got family and friends to sing ‘To Life’? Honestly? No. It feels like a strange diversion, an unfocused detour after such a keen honing in on more related topics.  I know it’s included to show how the music continues to inspire but it comes off as a chance for Miranda to pat himself on the back for devising the surprise for his bride.  So it smacks ever so slightly of inclusion for name value alone.

At a brief 92 minutes, there’s a bounty of information here for the casual fan and for those that have listened to the cast recording thousands of time. It’s nice to hear from Topol, the Oscar-nominated star of the movie who played Tevye onstage before and after his silver screen performance. Seeing him play the role onstage several years ago, I’m not ashamed to admit I burst ino tears the moment he said his first line. I would have liked to see a bit more comparisons between the Fiddler productions throughout the years, from the revised version that played Broadway in 2004 (I saw Harvey Fierstein as Tevye…another unexpected delight), the most recent revival from 2015, or from the current production playing off-Broadway performed entirely in Yiddish.  Even so, there are clips from a number of international productions, illustrating again the ease in which the show crosses through languages and interpretations.

Thanks to the judicious editing by Lewkowicz and the addition of some nice animations to tie passages together, it’s a well-paced watch. Engaging and entertaining but, like it’s subject, over in the blink of an eye, Fiddler: Miracle of Miracles may follow the same structure as many making-of documentaries but it gives the audience something extra. By looking at the bigger picture surrounding the show and how it has had an impact, it makes an oft-done musical seem as relevant today as ever before.