Tag Archives: Taika Waititi

The TIFF Report, Vol 5

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North Star

Director: Kristin Scott Thomas
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Freida Pinto, Sienna Miller, Emily Beecham, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sindhu Vee, Joshua McGuire
Synopsis: Three sisters return to their home for the third wedding of their twice-widowed mother. But the mother and daughters are forced to revisit the past and confront the future, with help from a colorful group of unexpected wedding guests.
Thoughts: Making her feature directorial debut, Kristin Scott Thomas has gone personal with North Star, also handling co-writing duties and playing the mother of three daughters (Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, & Emily Beecham) that come home for their mum’s third marriage lugging significant baggage. Based in part on her own life (Thomas’s navy pilot father was killed in action when she was six, and then her first stepfather was killed six years later), the movie wants to have all the flair of a quirky dramedy. Still, it can’t drum up much energy to convince us it cares much about anything. Not that it makes a lot of difference, but it’s regrettable for the film to be playing alongside His Three Daughters, a far more skilled look at the political dynamics between siblings. Thomas is barely in the movie (in one major goof, she’s missing from multiple group shots during a critical scene, only to magically appear out of thin air when she has a pivotal line), but when she is sharing time with Beecham, Miller, and Johansson, there is a distinct spark that is missing from the rest of the picture. Why more of these moments weren’t added to the film is anyone’s guess, but without that crackle, the film flatlines before the rehearsal dinner can get underway, let alone the wedding itself. Unpolished and, worse, uninteresting, there’s an aimlessness to it all (especially Johansson’s accent) that will have your eyelids swiftly drooping south. 

The Movie Emperor

Director: Ning Hao
Cast: Andy Lau, Pal Sinn, Rima Zeidan, Ning Hao, Eliz Lao, Chao Wai, Daniel Yu, Kelly Lin
Synopsis: Andy Lau is perfectly, cheekily cast as a movie star seeking relevance via a film festival–baiting art-house role in director Ning Hao’s sharp satire of movie industry pretension.
Thoughts:  Hong Kong actor Andy Lau is a verified superstar, a juggernaut at the box office in his home country, and the star of titles that have crossed over internationally. That fame created quite the buzz at TIFF23 for the world premiere of The Movie Emperor, a playful poke at the HK film industry, not to mention the fickleness of fandom and the overstuffed star ego. Lau plays an actor who takes a more serious role, hoping it will bring him the accolades (read: awards and respect) his peers have received. The joke of watching a movie featuring Lau’s character wanting to make art that finds success at a film festival not unlike a TIFF wasn’t lost on the packed crowd, which positively ate it up. Directed by Ning Hao (who also plays the director of the movie Lau is working on), this is an often hilariously deadpan takedown of an industry that both loves to be made fun of and reviles falling under the microscope. Hao has a way of introducing wild moments that catch you off guard, surprising bursts of frenetic energy that keep Lau and the viewer on guard and alert throughout. Unfortunately, it veers a bit off course during its last stretch when cancel culture and a porcine subplot come to the forefront to diminishing returns; however, Lau’s increasingly volatile run-ins with a motorist keep the movie mysterious and unpredictable until the end. One of the few films I almost didn’t get into because the demand for tickets was so great (Lau and Hao were both there, creating a major stir of fans clamoring to see them); I was glad I scored a ticket, and was granted a seat right as the house lights were dimming. 

The Movie Teller

Director: Lone Scherfig
Cast: Bérénice Bejo, Antonio de la Torre, Daniel Brühl, Sara Becker, Alondra Valenzuela
Synopsis: A young woman uses her storytelling gifts to share the magic of the pictures she has seen in the cinema with the poor inhabitants of a desert mining community.
Thoughts: I’m a true sucker for movies about movies, so I was likely pre-disposed to take a shine to Danish director Lone Scherfig’s Spanish-language adaptation of Hernán Rivera Letelier’s novel. Set in a small town in Chile’s Atacama Desert and tracking one family through the eyes of a young daughter and her coming of age, with The Movie Teller, Scherfig once again demonstrates her talent of creating an all-encompassing vision of time and place. Scherfig has insisted that period details are delicate but finely tuned as she did with An Education. If the threads of the story go a little awry and fall slack as the film nears its second hour, the performances from Sara Becker and Alondra Valenzuela as the older and younger versions of the protagonist keep the emotional beats in rhythm. In the third act of the picture, Becker is involved with the less exciting developments when her character begins an illicit affair with a much older man (Daniel Brühl) who was rumored to have had eyes for her mother.   Her mother is played by Bérénice Bejo (Final Cut), an actress I’m still waiting to get back on the Hollywood radar. She’s so good here (as usual) as a woman with unfulfilled expectations and desires who feels stuck in a dead-end town that you’re reminded why she snagged an Oscar nomination 11 years ago for The Artist. The character makes some questionable decisions, but Bejo consciously tries not to judge the woman she’s playing; instead, she interprets the role compassionately. The same can be said for Scherfig’s reflective approach to the Isabel Coixet and Walter Salles adaptation of the novel, which comes through as embracing the community’s people instead of simply rejecting the paths they choose toward happiness.

Sleep

Director: Jason Yu
Cast: Jung Yu-mi, Lee Sun-kyun, Kim Gook-hee
Synopsis: Expectant parents navigate a nightmare scenario when a spouse develops a sleep disorder that may belie a disturbing split personality.
Thoughts: Arriving from South Korea, Sleep preys on our fear of when we are the most vulnerable…as we get our slumber. Filmmakers have been picking at this scratchy blister for decades (hello, Wes Craven!), but writer/director Jason Yu injects a refreshing dose of dread with this finely crafted creep-fest. It was rather appropriate to be screening Sleep at a midnight showing when I should have been in bed, and you better believe that after it was over, I had a hard time closing my eyes long enough to convince my mind there was nothing to be afraid of. Far from your traditional K-horror in that it eschews creating a central figure of terror to thwart, Yu instead builds upon a simple set-up involving historical lore that stretches across borders. When her actor-husband starts to display strange behavior while asleep, a pregnant wife fears for both her safety and the well-being of her unborn child. Enlisting any help she can after her spouse begins to harm himself physically and develops a taste for a midnight snack of raw meat, the wife even resorts to calling in her mom and an eccentric mystic to clear the apartment of any evil presence. Is the affliction something physical or truly supernatural? Does it have anything to do with the loud noises that have annoyed the couple and the downstairs neighbors? Or has something else snuck into their lives, something which arrived undetected and has hidden itself within the husband, waiting for the perfect time to strike? Presented in three chapters, Yu wastes no time raising the hairs on your neck and keeps audiences on red alert until the finale. Where Sleep goes is surprising and scary and indicates the arrival of another auteur with a vision conveyed with decisive precision.

Next Goal Wins

Director: Taika Waititi
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Elisabeth Moss, Oscar Kightley, Uli Latukefu, Rachel House, Kaimana, David Fane, Beulah Koale, Chris Alosio, Taika Waititi, Will Arnett, Rhys Darby
Synopsis:  A comedy about the American Samoa soccer team’s attempt to make a World Cup — 12 years after their infamous 31-0 loss in a 2002 World Cup qualifying match.
Thoughts: There’s nothing that a packed theater loves more than getting behind a good underdog. An electric zing rushes over the crowd when our vested interest gets that much closer to success. So, I can understand why the early audiences for Next Goal Wins at the Toronto International Film Festival came out of their screenings buzzing. Much like 1993’s Cool Runnings (which is frequently similar in story and structure), the inspiring tale of American Samoa’s bid to pull itself up from last place in the World Cup rankings deserves its say on film, there’s no doubt about it. Unfortunately, Next Goal Wins is not the movie to do it. I’m pretty sure co-writer/director Taika Waititi’s latest is actively bad for much of its 105 minutes, this despite a last-ditch rally cry that only amounts to a modicum of audience rousing, likely to prepare them with enough energy to gather their belongings and go home. For a movie about community, it’s an isolating experience to sit through. That’s mainly because Waititi doesn’t know how to handle interpersonal drama as well as he does absurd humor. By the time I got around to seeing it on one of the festival’s final days, it was hard to drum up much enthusiasm for such mechanical entertainment.

Sly

Director: Thom Zimny
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frank Stallone, Henry Winkler, Talia Shire, John Herzfeld, Wesley Morris, Quentin Tarantino
Synopsis: The nearly fifty-year prolific career of Sylvester Stallone, who has entertained millions, is seen in retrospective in an intimate look of the actor, writer, and director-producer, paralleling with his inspirational life story.
Thoughts: Ultimately, I find that the point of watching any documentary is to learn something about the subject, and too often, with a look behind the curtain of Hollywood life, it never feels like you’re finding out something authentic. That’s not the case in the new Netflix documentary Sly, which premiered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival. Director Thom Zimny uses a brief 95-minute run time to cover the expected titles of Sylvester Stallone’s career (yes, even Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!) but expends more of its energy in allowing the audience to listen to the man himself tell us about the life he has led until this point. Though I think this could have been longer (hey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, interviewed here waxing poetic about Stallone’s talent, just got a 3-part doc on Netflix!) and explored more of Stallone’s family life, the concise nature of Sly aligns with the man himself.

Dicks: The Musical

Director: Larry Charles
Cast: Aaron Jackson, Josh Sharp, Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally, Megan Thee Stallion, D’Arcy Carden, Nick Offerman, Tom Kenny, Bowen Yang
Synopsis: A pair of business rivals discover that they’re identical twins and decide to swap places in an attempt to trick their divorced parents into getting back together.
Thoughts: Throughout TIFF, all I’d heard about was the epic first screening of Dicks: The Musical. While the reviews of the movie itself were very mixed from the crowd, A24 had sent a live choir into the audience, throwing beach balls and other organ-shaped inflatables into the crowd. No screening could match that burst of energy, but being at the Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award screening, the last screening at TIFF23, was a blast. And you know what?   The movie from Borat director Larry Charles (The Dictator) is a rip-roaring riot. Yes, it’s offensive, explicit, raunchy, wrong, cheap-looking, and tacky. It’s also bright, sharp, self-aware, and committed, with songs that have no right to be as tuneful and comedically well-rounded as they are. There’s something to offend everyone in Dicks: The Musical, and if you don’t leave thinking about at least one joke stars/writers Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson should have cut, I’m not sure if the movie has done its job. Like The Book of Mormon (which, like Dicks: The Musical, has surprisingly excellent music) or South Park, the point in offending everyone and not just one group is to illustrate that everyone can be a target, and there is equal opportunity to laugh at obvious jokes that are not meant to be taken seriously.

Previous Volumes
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4

Movie Review ~ Next Goal Wins

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The Facts:

Synopsis: The story of the infamously terrible American Samoa soccer team, known for a brutal 2001 FIFA match they lost 31-0.
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Elisabeth Moss, Oscar Kightley, Uli Latukefu, Rachel House, Kaimana, David Fane, Beulah Koale, Chris Alosio, Taika Waititi, Will Arnett, Rhys Darby
Director: Taika Waititi
Rated: PG-13
Running Length: 103 minutes
TMMM Score: (3/10)
Review: There’s nothing that a packed theater loves more than getting behind a good underdog.  An electric zing rushes over the crowd when our vested interest gets that much closer to success.  So, I can understand why the early audiences for Next Goal Wins at the Toronto International Film Festival came out of their screenings buzzing.  Much like 1993’s Cool Runnings (which is frequently similar in story and structure), the inspiring story of American Samoa’s bid to pull itself up from last place in the World Cup rankings deserves its say on film, there’s no doubt about it. 

Unfortunately, Next Goal Wins is not the movie to do it.  I’m pretty sure co-writer/director Taika Waititi’s latest is actively bad for much of its 105 minutes, this despite a last-ditch rally cry that only amounts to a modicum of audience rousing, likely to prepare them with enough energy to gather their belongings and go home.  For a movie about community, it’s an isolating experience to sit through.  That’s mainly because Waititi doesn’t know how to handle interpersonal drama as well as he does absurd humor. By the time I got around to seeing it, on one of the final days of the festival, it was hard to drum up much enthusiasm for such mechanical entertainment.

Opening with Waititi (Thor: Love and Thunder) himself in a ridiculous cameo as a mystic priest that introduces the characters and acts as an irritating semi-narrator, we meet Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender, The Killer), a Dutch soccer coach who has seen better days.  About to lose his footing in the world of Association football, he’s given a final reprieve: become the coach of the American Samoa team and stop their losing streak.  If they don’t turn things around, he’ll be out of a job, and the South Pacific territory will lose their right to have an officially recognized team.

Rongen accepts the job out of desperation and arrives on the island with a gigantic chip on his shoulder, made worse by the rural locale and the sorry state of his team.  Rongen doesn’t want to be there, and the players don’t believe in themselves enough because no one has lit a flame of inspiration for them.  As with all sports movies, it only takes time for the coach and players to learn from one another, but it’s an uphill climb.  With the season moving forward and different issues with players changing his outlook, Rongen will make professional gains with the team…but will it be enough to score a more significant victory for them all?

Fassbender looks bored and is badly miscast (and knows it) in Next Goal Wins, and you wish the far more appealing American Samoan cast were truly the stars.  This should be a story about the team first and foremost.  Instead, it’s a laboriously formulaic slog through an obnoxious knob’s redemptive arc that has nothing new to add to the sports/underdog genre.  Worst of all, and more people praising the movie need to note this, the way Waititi’s script handles a non-binary trans woman (played with grace by the mononymous Kaimana) is so backward-facing from a 2023 viewpoint that you’ll be looking for a DeLorean to help you find your way home.

Movie Review ~ Thor: Love and Thunder

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Thor enlists the help of Valkyrie, Korg, and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster to fight Gorr the God Butcher, who intends to make the gods extinct.
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Jaimie Alexander, Taika Waititi, Russell Crowe
Director: Taika Waititi
Rated: PG-13
Running Length: 125 minutes
TMMM Score: (5/10)
Review:  We’re pretty deep into the Marvel Cinematic Universe now that we can freely talk about those first two Thor movies and how not that great they were, right?  Good.  Starting in 2011, the Norse god made a dull debut in a standard special effects picture when the gathering of the Avengers was still in its infancy.  While Thor (Chris Hemsworth, Blackhat) would make a solid addition to the first Avengers in 2012, the next standalone film in 2013 was perhaps even more of a disappointment.  Lifeless and aimless, coming out between Iron Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier made Thor: The Dark World look even more pedestrian by comparison.

It surprised many, then, that 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok was the energy boost it proved to be.  As part of the Marvel blitz of films in 2017/2018, leading toward the final official two Avengers films, new director Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit) brought a renewed strength and style this hero desperately needed.  Leaning heavily into the silly comedy that Waititi was known to mix nicely with dynamic visuals and narrative, this third Thor outing had a dynamite villainess (Cate Blanchett, having a blast) and even gave Hemsworth a shot of adrenaline he’d been missing.

With the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe looking far into the future, Thor would always play a part. Still, it was never sure where he’d fit since Ragnarok and previous post-Avengers appearances changed much of his trajectory.  While Waititi was on a solid roll as a director, sometime actor (Lightyear), and producer of several highly-regarded properties, it was a coup for Marvel to get him back on Thor: Love and Thunder. Part of the anticipation, then, for this fourth installment was to see where Waititi would take the blonde bodybuilder butt-kicker next.

Despite continuing to help when needed occasionally (hence an early appearance by the Guardians of the Galaxy), Thor prefers to keep a low profile and discover his inner zen after years of fighting world-crushing evil.  Suffering much loss of family and friends, Thor has gotten good at holding others at arm’s length and not allowing them to get close.  It’s only after Gorr (Christian Bale, Out of the Furnace), known throughout the galaxy as the God Butcher, appears and begins to enact a vengeful vendetta against the gods he believes wronged him when he needed them most that Thor is called back into action. 

To defeat this potent foe, Thor must team up with Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson, Sylvie’s Love), now King of New Asgard and former flame Jane Foster (Natalie Portman, Lucy in the Sky) transformed into Mighty Thor thanks to a reconstructed version of Thor’s hammer Mjolnir, along with a rock gladiator (voiced by Waititi), and a duo of screaming goats (the funniest of several running gags).  Their quest to stay one step ahead of the murderous Gorr will lead them to a city of gods ruled over by Zeus (Russell Crowe, Unhinged), where they hope to gather a greater allegiance and, later, to the far reaches of the universe robbed of all color.

I’ll start by saying that the marketing for this film (posters, trailers, etc.) are totally on target and nail the right vibe that continues to help define Thor as separate from the other Avengers, who are already adept at curating their brand.  Waititi has contributed so much to give Thor and his gang a near-kitschy ‘80s feel, and it works as well here as it did in the previous film.  What doesn’t work as well is Waititi’s insistence on overplaying that wacky comedy which, when doled out in spurts, works nicely.  When it’s nonstop goofiness, as it often is in Thor: Love and Thunder, the movie can be exhausting to watch and genuinely baffling to experience.

It’s nice to see Portman back, you can see why the chance to work with Waititi was an enticing offer to get her to return. One wishes she had more robust material to work with and her overall purpose wasn’t so rudimentary.  There’s an essential piece of her puzzle not given away in the trailers, so I won’t spoil it here, but the writers lay something on Jane Foster to overcome and care so little about it aside from it being a convenient plot device, they don’t give anything in the way of specifics. (I know that’s just as vague and non-specific but once you see the movie you’ll understand why and also what I’m talking about.)  Then you have Crowe with the strangest of accents (perhaps wanting to compete with Tom Hanks in Elvis for the worst attempt at indistinguishable dialect) in a befuddling appearance that’s more jokey than jovial. 

Thankfully, Hemsworth keeps the movie somewhat grounded and reminds you that Thor: Love and Thunder is, at its heart, a superhero film.  As strange as it was to see Bale appear on the other side of the good guy/bad guy wheel, the Oscar winner does wonderful (and frightening!) work. Several sequences deliver quite nicely, despite an overabundance of somewhat shoddy CGI…if you can even see it in the first place.  One battle near the end has monsters barely defined before they are defeated.  Does it deliver the kind of standalone fun that recent Marvel success stories have?  I don’t think so, and, based on the shoulder-shrugging post-credit sequences, I’m not sure I’d be chomping at the bit for the next installment of a Thor story either.

Movie Review ~ Lightyear

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The Facts:

Synopsis: While spending years attempting to return home, marooned Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear encounters an army of ruthless robots commanded by Zurg, who is trying to steal his fuel source.
Stars: Chris Evans, Uzo Aduba, James Brolin, Mary McDonald-Lewis, Keke Palmer, Efren Ramirez, Peter Sohn, Dale Soules, Taika Waititi, Isiah Whitlock Jr.
Director: Angus MacLane
Rated: PG
Running Length: 100 minutes
TMMM Score: (6.5/10)
Review:  Strangely, in this age of audiences clamoring for the next installment of the big franchise film, the one studio that gets slapped on the hand for sequel-izing their big projects the most is PIXAR.  I don’t know why it happens, but I consistently see upturned noses at the landmark computer animation studio taking their established work and branching them off in different directions.  Heads were really spinning when Disney announced that PIXAR would be releasing Lightyear, a prequel (of sorts) to their first mega-hit Toy Story, which celebrates its 27th birthday in 2022.  Perhaps it was the still fresh bruise of the arrival of Toy Story 4 in 2019 after many fans thought Toy Story 3 ended the series so well, but the advance anticipation of a new chapter in this universe was grim.

With the full disclaimer broadcasting to you that I’m over the age limit for being able to honestly grade these movies (if the screenings weren’t so late at night, I could bring a few younger critics that would really give their opinions), I’m pleased to report that Lightyear is a zippy ride into pre-Toy Story lore and one that shouldn’t ruffle too many feathers in the fandom.  As the title card that preceded the film explains, Andy received his Buzz Lightyear action figure in the original Toy Story after he saw him in a movie.  Lightyear is that movie.  Wrap your head around that for a moment, adjust your bearings, and let’s move forward.

Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans, Knives Out) is a headstrong Space Ranger on a mission with his fellow ranger Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba, Miss Virginia) and a new rookie recruit (Bill Hader, IT: Chapter Two).  They’ve landed on a mysterious planet, but fall under attack before they can accomplish their task.  Buzz being Buzz, he tries to save the day but winds up stranding the three of them (as well as an entire crew back at the ship) on the desolate planet.  Working to find a way off the planet takes time, and when Buzz and Alisha finally figure out how to return home, it comes with time-altering consequences.  The more Buzz attempts the mission in space, the faster time moves back on the planet.  Everyone ages except for Buzz. 

As the years/missions pass, Buzz continues his trials, accompanied by SOX, a robot cat meant to stave off any psychological trauma of the time he’s losing but who winds up a valuable asset (to Buzz and the movie).  Just as he figures out a way home, the evil Zurg appears and threatens to destroy the colony that has been built to sustain life for the crew while they await their home trek.  Banding together with a multi-generational bunch of misfits, none of whom initially measure up to Space Ranger standard in the eyes of Buzz, the veteran ranger will need to trust his new team to have his back as he learns to let go and truly lead.  Yet there are still secrets to be revealed about the origin of Zurg and once unveiled, will it change the mission goal or push Buzz and his team to go beyond the limits of their strength?

Director Angus MacLane keeps the action fast and, more importantly, fun for audiences that were kids when the original film came out and are probably taking their children to this new adventure.  If I’m honest, the overall look of Lightyear comes off like a Disney+ film that tested well enough to get a theatrical run.  I can’t say why a more earnest effort like Turning Red would get shuffled off to the streaming service…but it shouldn’t deter you from giving this one a go.  It has a sizable amount of creative inspiration and inclusion (the mismatched gang Buzz has to lead is of varying ages and sizes), not to mention a fully formed same-sex relationship that isn’t the focus but isn’t pushed to the side as tokenism either.    

Movie Review ~ The Electrical Life of Louis Wain

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The Facts:

Synopsis: The extraordinary true story of eccentric British artist Louis Wain, whose playful, sometimes even psychedelic pictures helped to transform the public’s perception of cats forever.

Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Andrea Riseborough, Toby Jones, Stacy Martin, Sharon Rooney, Hayley Squires, Aimee Lou Wood, Adeel Akhtar, Julian Barratt, Asim Chaudhry, Indica Watson, Sophia Di Martino, Taika Waititi, Olivia Colman

Director: Will Sharpe

Rated: PG-13

Running Length: 111 minutes

TMMM Score: (5.5/10)

Review: As has often been the cast for the past several years, actor Benedict Cumberbatch has two movies that are arriving near the end of 2021 that are playing at a number of film festivals.  One film is a bit elusive and hard to see unless you are attending one of the most prestigious events.  The other one is The Electrical Life of Louis Wain.  One film is getting the actor much acclaim and buzz about another Oscar nomination after his stoic turn in 2014’s The Imitation Game.  The other movie is The Electrical Life of Louis Wain.  Available at quite a number of film festivals over the past several months, you can see Amazon Studios and its other producers fighting a losing battle to get some traction on The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, the secondary Cumberbatch movie. However, with Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog readying for release on Netflix, it’s lights out for this twee bit of falderal that sparks early only to be undone by it’s overreliance on puffy artistry on the back end.

Look, before I saw this biographical drama, I had no clue the English artist Louis Wain played such an integral role in helping the domestic cat gain such popularity in Europe through his artwork.  As a dedicated cat lover (an animal that has a box for its own litter which it also covers for you, keeps it distance when it’s not in the mood to be bothered, and can tell when bad weather is approaching is A-OK in my book!) I am ever in his debt for normalizing the attitude toward cats in his country because many of those feelings became popularized the world over.  I was unfamiliar with his art before a viewing of director Will Sharpe’s film and the recreation of his style and technique through the screenplay Sharpe co-wrote with Simon Stephenson (Paddington 2) were fascinating bits of mechanics to watch – it’s everything else that surrounded it that became so befuddling.

Perhaps it’s the feeling that Sharpe was grasping for a style and tone that didn’t completely make sense all the time.  The opening stretch and final hour are flighty bits of quirkiness that feel curated and calculated, like what someone attempting to be irreverent with the life of a colorful character would put on screen.  By all accounts, the mental health issues that plagued Wain and various members of his family were present for a long while but only presented themselves rarely over the years until they became more serious in his older days.  It was during his romance of the family governess (Claire Foy, Breathe) when Wain found his true happiness and it’s also when Sharpe’s movie gets into its best and most easily accessible mode.

The early marketing materials and trailers I saw of the movie suggested the Foy/Cumberbatch relationship was going to be far more rambunctious, so I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. Yet it turned out to be my favorite parts of the movie.  The two have such a natural ease of working together and I can’t help but think that it’s Foy that consistently brings out the best in her male costars, melting some icy actors down and letting audiences see the softer sides.  She absolutely lets us see another side of Cumberbatch, a far more tender one that finds himself caring for another when he previously felt like that part of his life would never come to pass.  These are the meat the film feasts on…but the meal can’t last forever and before too long it’s back to the same old ticks and tricks once more.

I’m all for biographies that color outside of the lines (and The Courier’s Suzie Davies production design along with Paddington’s Erik Alexander Wilson’s cinematography are never lacking for bold color choices) but it has to circle back to a point – something The Electrical Life of Louis Wain takes an awful long time to get to.  Along the way Sharpe stops to create several beautiful moments (a shot of Foy and Cumberbatch sitting in a meadow is gorgeous) but it’s balanced with far too many repetitive scenes of Wain fighting with one or more of his disapproving sisters.

Controversially, I’m not as sold on Cumberbatch as most are.  I loved him for Sherlock but have since found him to be decidedly hit or miss with his work, feeling that perhaps he’s more limited in his range than we’d care to admit.  He’s not bad in this new film but he’s been better in others that are about far less important people and ideas.  Fans of his will want to check out The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, all others should save their Cumberbatch Cinema of 2021 for The Power of the Dog.   

Movie Review ~ The Suicide Squad

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Supervillains Harley Quinn, Bloodsport, Peacemaker and a collection of nutty cons at Belle Reve prison join the super-secret, super-shady Task Force X as they are dropped off at the remote, enemy-infused island of Corto Maltese.

Stars: Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Sylvester Stallone, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, Peter Capaldi, David Dastmalchian, Daniela Melchior, Michael Rooker, Alice Braga, Pete Davidson, Joaquín Cosío, Juan Diego Botto, Storm Reid, Nathan Fillion, Taika Waititi, Steve Agee, Flula Borg

Director: James Gunn

Rated: R

Running Length: 132 minutes

TMMM Score: (6.5/10)

Review: Oh, sweet swampland did I hate 2016’s Suicide Squad.  A real trash heap of a film from a talented director with a stellar line-up of A+ leads, a B+ supporting cast, and a B- set of comic-book characters to work with.  No, the Suicide Squad wasn’t an area of DC Comics that I was familiar with before I saw the film, but you can see the attraction fans had for these oddballs – it’s the same reason why the similarly jokey (but far better) Deadpool went over so well with audiences.  People like to root for the underdog, even if, and maybe even sometimes especially if, they are the villain. 

While that PG-13 rated film failed to capitalize on the red-carpet Wonder Woman had rolled out just months earlier, Warner Brothers wasn’t quite ready to throw the towel in and they made a bold move by following-up the first film with a sequel that also serves as a semi-reboot in the process.  Nabbing director James Gunn after he was briefly axed by Disney from Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, the studio gained a legion of fans from the Marvel franchise who rejoiced that someone had plucked one of their favorite directors up after he had been (apparently) done wrong.

The resulting effort is The Suicide Squad and after five years it looks like Warner Brothers and DC Comics are nearly back in business, but not quite yet.  With the success of an R-rated cut of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the studio is more comfortable letting their films carry that restricted rating because it has proven to be what fans want.  (It also doesn’t deter children from seeing the film.  At my press screening, I can’t tell you how “overjoyed” I was to see so many parents bring their little children to this hard-R film.  Congrats, all!)  With an abundance of grisly gore and language that would make the Squad from sanitized feeling 2016 blush, this crew is way more amped up and ready to play than the previous iteration and that admittedly makes for a more entertaining ride. 

Audiences are in for a surprise at the beginning of the film because nothing is quite what it seems…or how the movie has been marketed up until now.  I’ll leave it at that, and you can read between the lines in my review if you want to know more about what that means in terms of who is in the film and for how long.  Returning from the original film is Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman, RoboCop), leading a group of skilled supervillains including Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie, I, Tonya) and Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney, Jack Reacher) to an island nation on the orders of Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom).  The leader of the country with friendly relations to the United States has been murdered, along with his family and now a top-secret weapon is at risk of falling into the hands of revolutionaries who don’t know what kind of power they could wield.

New to the team are Peacemaker (John Cena, in his second franchise film of the summer after F9: The Fast Saga) and Bloodsport (Idris Elba, Concrete Cowboy), two alpha males forced to work together who each try to outdo one another when it comes to killing the most bad guys.  Add in King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone, Creed), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), and Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian, Prisoners) and your rag-tag team of the strange and unusual but highly deadly is mostly complete.  They’ll find they need to rely on each other and their individual strengths (some they were born with, some thrust upon them) when faced with an enemy that’s truly out of this world. 

It’s easy to draw a line from the misfit crew in Guardians of the Galaxy all the way over to the denizens of the maximum-security prisons where The Suicide Squad does its recruiting, so Gunn makes a natural fit for these proceedings.  What doesn’t quite work all the time is the film’s overcompensation for having an elevated rating this time around.  Brandishing it’s more adult rating instead of doling it out with some style, it’s often sloppy and slappy instead of sharp like it should be.  The first fifteen minutes of the movie are legitimately terrible, and I was honestly dreading what was to come next, but then Gunn makes a move I didn’t see coming and suddenly I was interested again.  From that point on I felt like more engaging characters were brought in with increasingly raised stakes. 

By now, it’s official that Elba is a bona-fide star and this only hammers that point home.  How they missed the window of opportunity to have him take over as James Bond is simply beyond me (or is it not too late?).  He can do action, drama, comedy, you name it and he gets the chance to flex all those muscles here and then some.  In her third outing as the demented former flame of the Joker, Robbie continues to fine tune the role and even if 2020’s Birds of Prey was a better showcase, she’s no second banana here either.  I was left a little cold by Cena earlier this summer in F9: The Fast Saga but he’s a lot of fun here as an all-business killer for hire that does it all in the name of peace.  Gunn’s casting of Stallone as the Great White Shark looking for “num-num” is inspired and he easily steals the show with the least number of (full and coherent) sentences spoken out of anyone.  Kudos also to Davis for truly going for it this time out.  Davis rarely gets the chance to play these kinds of women and as morally challenged as Amanda Waller was in the 2016 film, she’s far more in the muck of it all in this one.

I guess my biggest stumbling block with both this film and its predecessor is that I just haven’t yet warmed to this branch of the DC Universe.  While I found this team to be much easier to get along with than the last one, I still don’t like the vibe that has permeated both movies.  A little of that same vibe was even present in the Guardians films so maybe it’s just a case of preferring my superheroes/villains more on the traditional side of things and less on the outskirts of society.  The Suicide Squad can hold its head high because it rights many of the wrongs that were done back in 2016, but it also needs to reconcile the fact that this team can’t even hold a candle to the likes of Batman and Superman in my book.

Movie Review ~ Jojo Rabbit

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A young boy in Hitler’s army finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home.

Stars: Roman Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson, Thomasin McKenzie, Alfie Allen, Taika Waititi, Stephen Merchant

Director: Taika Waititi

Rated: PG-13

Running Length: 108 minutes

TMMM Score: (8.5/10)

Review: As I was watching Jojo Rabbit a few weeks back one thought kept running through my mind and it was this: “Gosh, I hope people get this is satire when they see this.”  Now, I’m not saying our society has become overly sensitive and far be it from me to use a gross phrase like ‘cancel culture’ with any literal purpose in my review but let’s face it, in the past few years there’s been a strange urge to jump on seemingly innocuous thoughts, words, and deeds and make them into what they aren’t.  Plenty of ideas and texts are out there that were obviously meant to harm, so it takes a little restraint to step back and look at the big picture to separate the serious from the satire.

Jojo Rabbit is a clear satire of anti-hate rhetoric and it couldn’t be clearer of its intentions.  Yet I sat through the screening so worried that no one was going to get the joke and take the film literally.  There are some horrific jokes concerning Nazis, concentration camps, genocide, and misogyny (to name but a few) yet they are presented in such a way that if you aren’t in on the joke you might be squirming in your seat during the opening credits when young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) skips with carefree glee around his tiny German village “heil-ing” all his friends and neighbors.  I admit it took me a few introductory scenes to thoroughly settle into writer/director Taika Waititi’s sardonic structure before I gave over fully.  Once I did, I found a lot of heart in addition to the laughs.

A 10-year old member of the Hitler Youth, Jojo is off to his first training camp with his best friend Yorki (an adorably scene-stealing Archie Yates) and his imaginary best friend, Adolf Hitler (Waititi, Thor: Ragnarok).  With Hitler as his imaginary friend, you can imagine the kind of pep talks Jojo gets as he begins his service and in Waititi’s hands Hitler is presented as an easily excitable, petulant, man-child that provides Jojo some moral support but not always the best guidance.  Teased at camp for his sensitive nature in an arena of hate, he gets the nickname Jojo Rabbit from his fellow Nazi buds and makes a bold gesture as a way to show them he’s stronger than he looks.  When an injury sidelines Jojo, he’s put to work in the office of Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell, Vice) distributing propaganda while his single mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson, Under the Skin) works to make ends meet.

Often left at home alone, Jojo is surprised to discover his mother has hidden a young girl (Thomasin McKenzie, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies) in the walls…and she’s Jewish.  Having lost her parents and everyone else she cares about to the war, Elsa has no one to depend on but Rosie’s kindness and has developed a steely exterior that matches well with Jojo’s extreme indifference to a girl he feels he’s supposed to hate on sight.  With imaginary Hitler encouraging Jojo to study this girl so he can file a detailed report later on (in a manifesto with a title that becomes a running joke), Jojo gets closer to her and both find out they have more in common than they think…or what they’ve been taught to think.

For all the comedic elements to Jojo Rabbit, there’s an even deeper emotional core running through the center of the movie and I was surprised as how moving the film becomes as it goes on.  With several unexpected twists (and one downright jaw-dropping one), Waititi keeps audiences involved with Jojo and Elsa’s story but never lets them get ahead of the action.  We all know how the war ended but I had no idea where their stories would wind up.  The outcome surprised me and was par for the course with the rest of the film which never followed the path I thought it would.

Walking the fine line of comedy are a strong roster of actors, some appearing only in brief cameos.  Stephan Merchant (Logan) and Rebel Wilson (Isn’t It Romantic) may pop in for a moment but they each get at least one hefty laugh; Wilson in particular gets one of the best jokes in the entire movie.  While I like Rockwell and feel he’s been on a nice roll the past few years, his role here skewed a bit too farcical compared to the other players.  On the other hand, I often struggle with Johansson but found her work as Jojo’s strong-willed but vulnerable mother to be incredibly moving.  The real stars are McKenzie and Griffin who carry the film with conviction – two young talents handling difficult subject matter but doing so with a mature sophistication.  Really stellar work.

Expected to be a major player at the Oscars, Jojo Rabbit won the People’s Choice Award at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival. In the last 11 years, 10 of the winners have received a Best Picture Oscar Nomination.  It will certainly divide people and that’s a good thing because even with the satire carefully identified it might not be the movie for you, but I’d hate to see the movie discounted solely for the fact that people didn’t get it’s sardonic tones.  Waititi adapted, produced, directed, and stars in this and deserves some credit for magically making something so audacious work so well.

Movie Review ~ Thor: Ragnarok

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Imprisoned, the mighty Thor finds himself in a lethal gladiatorial contest against the Hulk, his former ally. Thor must fight for survival and race against time to prevent the all-powerful Hela from destroying his home and the Asgardian civilization.

Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Sam Neill, Benedict Cumberbatch

Director: Taika Waititi

Rated: PG-13

Running Length: 130 minutes

Trailer Review: Here

TMMM Score: (9/10)

Review: Let’s be real here…you didn’t like those first two Thor movies either, did you? I knew it. Seemingly out of place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, likely because they were the only films that took place largely in literally their own universe, Thor and it’s sequel Thor: The Dark World were what comic book movies should never, ever be: boring. It was only when Thor joined up with his friends in The Avengers and Avengers: The Age of Ultron that the Norse god felt energized and alive. Well after Thor: Ragnarok there is enough electricity generated by director Taika Waititi to power several more sequels. It puts the other two films to shame and bests several other Marvel outings at the same time.

As the film opens, Thor (Chris Hemsworth, Rush) is in a bit of a bind as he finds himself in the clutches of the fire demon Surtur. Surthur lets Thor know that a great battle known as Ragnarok is about to unfold, a battle that will see Surtur lay waste to Thor’s Asgardian home and all its peoples. Since this is the prologue and we have a couple of hours left, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Thor makes it out of his prison and finds his way back to Asgard. Arriving unannounced only to run into his mischief making adopted brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston, Kong: Skull Island) masquerading as their father Odin (Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs). Unaware that Loki imprisoned his father on Earth, Thor meets up with Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch, August: Osage County) who points him in the right direction of where his father may be.

Thor does find his pops but the reunion is short-lived as his long-lost sister Hela (Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine, having the absolute best time ever) arrives with her eyes on Odin’s throne. Sending her siblings into another galaxy to get them out of her villainous way, she starts to wreak havoc in her homeland and Thor and Loki make their way through a new world ruled by the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park). With Loki avoiding a life of servitude on the junk planet, that leaves Thor fighting for his freedom, gladiator-style, against his old friend the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher). Assisted by fellow Asgardian in exile Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson, Creed) and loyal Heimdall (Idris Elba, Prometheus), all make their way back to Asgard to face off with Hela to save their world.

There’s a lot that happens in Thor: Ragnarok and it’s almost universally entertaining. Waititi (who also plays a dryly-hilarious alien made up of rocks) brings such interesting ideas to the table along with a sense of humor and fun that has been missing from not only Thor’s previous outings but from Marvel at large. With its fun cameos (not only from Marvel characters), it’s wacky and colorful and I enjoyed every minute of it. Mark Mothersbaugh’s (The LEGO Movie) score is a real tip and while they curiously use Immigrant Song twice, it makes sense and gives key battle sequences a rock concert vibe. I normally recoil at movies that are so CGI heavy but the visuals are gorgeously rendered here, making for truly exciting viewing.

While it does help to have a working knowledge of the other entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this one may be a good entry point for newbies…but then someone will have to explain to them why the other two movies are so dull. Here’s hoping Marvel retains Waititi because he’s the reason why this works so very well.