Tag Archives: Zoey Deutch

Movie Review ~ Not Okay

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The Facts:

Synopsis: An ambitious young woman, desperate for followers and fame, fakes a trip to Paris to up her social media presence. When a terrifying incident takes place in the real world and becomes part of her imaginary trip, her white lie becomes a moral quandary that offers her all the attention she’s wanted.
Stars: Zoey Deutch, Dylan O’Brien, Mia Isaac, Embeth Davidtz, Nadia Alexander, Tia Dionne Hodge, Negin Farsad, Karan Soni, Dash Perry
Director: Quinn Shephard
Rated: R
Running Length: 100 minutes
TMMM Score: (7.5/10)
Review: When I was in school, I hadn’t officially been diagnosed FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) yet, so myself, my peers and others in our age range had to struggle mightily with the nagging sense that something was off whenever opportunity passed us by without any outlet for relief. There was no one to share our burden or feel our pain. I won’t say it was a lonely life, but there were stretches when only a good block of Must-See TV or another popular weekday line-up would cure those blues. So I get it. I get that everyone (mainly) needs to be socialized and be part of the discussion in one way or another.

That’s why I could understand what drives the protagonist in writer/director Quinn Shephard’s cringe comedy Not Okay to make terrible decisions throughout the film. What is hard to fathom, and what I find that I have to battle with constantly, is understanding why the decisions have to snowball to such an avalanche in the first place. The more we want to be noticed, the less we want to take credit or, more to the point, own up to our piece into the system we have created. It’s something Shephard admirably aims at in her film, setting it apart from your typical “I’ve got a secret!” gangly comedy.

Working for an online publication known for putting out the goopiest of puff pieces, Danni Sanders (Zoey Deutch, The Disaster Artist) is stuck behind a desk editing photos. Ostracized by her co-workers for being that one annoying office employee that can’t take a hint and read social cues, Danni is a try-hard that targets prominent popularity as the highest of mountains to climb. Desperate to become a writer and contribute more to her job, she overhears a successful colleague talking about a recent Euro writers retreat and decides to impress her boss by going on one of her own. Of course, a ticket overseas is way expensive, and she hasn’t applied anywhere…but with the magic of photoshop and some PTO days, she fakes a enriching trip to Paris and fills her social media with info on her fantasy (in more ways than one) journey, convincing everyone in her life she has traveled to the City of Lights.

Then a tragedy occurs in Paris, and Danni is faced with a decision. Come clean and tell everyone it was a lie, or go all in and ride the wave of supportive messages she’s received from once ambivalent family and friends concerned for her well-being. You can imagine which route was easier to take. When she “arrives” back in the States, she’s thrust into a National spotlight but begins to feel pangs of guilt about her lie, guilt that drives her to visit an emotional support group for survivors of mass tragedies. She meets Rowan (Mia Isaac, Don’t Make Me Go), an advocate for gun safety after she was involved in a school shooting that claimed her sister’s life. Always teetering on telling the truth, Danni is inspired by this young activist and is eventually swept up in her cause. Finally, she realizes how deep she’s become immersed in her tall tale. Can she make things right without losing her new friend and damaging the credibility both of them have built together?

There are a lot of moments throughout Not Okay where you will likely find yourself wince-ing at the level to which Danni sinks to maintain her lie. Like the recent Vanessa Bayer comedy on Showtime, I Love That For You, we have a flawed protagonist who tells an unforgivable lie that will be revealed sooner or later. The longer they keep up the charade, the harder you know it will be to restore their lives when it all comes to light. Credit goes to Shephard for making that dénouement a minor point of the movie by the time we get to it. By then, the characters have progressed beyond just needing to fess up about untruths, requiring a hard reset of character to rebuild what they lost.

If you weren’t on the Deutch train before Not Okay, I’m hedging a bet you’ll be ready to buy a ticket after watching her work here. In the past, I’ve been tripped up a bit with her performances, finding them a little too preciously coy. The sadness of Danni comes out fairly quickly here, and it makes her relatable – we may not all have let this go on as long as she does, but who hasn’t thought about how easy it would be fudge the truth just to be allowed into a conversation? Deutch handles these tricky turns well, not asking us to feel sorry for Danni but not excusing her behavior.

Already having a great July with the release of Don’t Make Me Go on Amazon Prime, Isaac turns in another blisteringly good performance as a young woman rocked by a tragedy that continues putting on a brave face for others. As the veritable poster child for a movement, Rowan has to be the strong one even if she’s still vulnerable inside. Isaac handles all these emotions well and delivers an impassioned speech near the end with a hefty vigor that audiences wouldn’t find in any run-of-the-mill younger actor. It was also fun to see Deutch reunite with her co-star in The Outfit Dylan O’Brien (Bumblebee) as a Pete Davidson-esque office drone Danni has eyes for, and Embeth Davidtz (Old) exuding a cold snobbish detachment playing Danni’s mom. More shoutouts to Tia Dionne Hodge as Rowan’s mom and Nadia Alexander (Monsterland) as Danni’s co-worker trying to figure out why the girl they all couldn’t stand one week is now so popular.

I’m not sure how inspiring the film is for our current college graduates entering the workforce because it paints them as slightly vapid and social media obsessed (oh wait, they sort of are…sorry!), but Not Okay keeps pace with an evolving conversation over how much value we place on being seen. Is it enough for millions of people to notice what we do and like/comment/follow, or is it more meaningful if we can connect with one person that can make a difference to ourselves or others?    By writing a story sprung from a fantastical set-up and then tingeing it with satisfying emotional drama, Shephard seems to show us that life will surprise you no matter how you plan.

Movie Review ~ The Outfit

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The Facts:

Synopsis: An expert tailor must outwit a dangerous group of mobsters to survive a fateful night.
Stars: Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O’Brien, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Simon Russell Beale
Director: Graham Moore
Rated: R
Running Length: 105 minutes
TMMM Score: (9/10)
Review:  Though movie theaters have been open for many months now, live theater is still an unsure thing for some people. Being in an enclosed space with a few hundred people for a 90-minute movie is one thing, but what about a 2,500 seat theater with a capacity crowd? Or how about a concert venue seeing a pop star and finding yourself shoulder to shoulder with someone sneezing their way through the opening act? It definitely gives you pause. I do miss live theater, and while my season tickets to the Broadway touring shows have been getting used regularly now that more protocols are in place, the smaller venues that house plays are struggling. I find myself craving these intimate shows with unamplified actors speaking so that you have to lean forward in your seat and tilt your head a bit to hear each word. That’s theater, to me.

I thought of that kind of theater I’d been missing while watching director Graham Moore’s The Outfit, which he co-wrote with Johnathan McClain. Taking place on a snowy winter night in 1956 within several rooms of a shop in Chicago owned and operated by Leonard Burling, this is one of those tight and taut mystery/thrillers that could easily have been adapted from (or, later, into) a stage play. The dialogue is so specific and focused that you must always pay attention to catch what’s being said. It all makes a difference in what happens as the night continues. Requiring the audience to be an active participant in The Outfit leads to the skilled movie being the first sign that spring moviegoing is revving its engines, breaking the silence of this strange period in movies released as awards season wraps up. 

Moore and McClain’s script involves Burling, a cutter (“I’m not a tailor.”) who worked on the famed Saville Row in London before he lost his family due to circumstances that will come to light soon enough. Now quietly making his sharp suits and wares alongside his secretary/would-be apprentice Mable (Zoey Deutch, Vampire Academy), Burling is a man that observes more than he speaks. Turning a blind eye to the organized crime dealings secretly exchanged via a mailbox at the back of his shop, he holds his head down, which keeps him in the good graces of the important families and surely secures his safety for his silence.

On this night, the son of the most powerful gangster in Chicago has arrived for his late-night pick-up with news that a mole has been discovered, and he has possession of a recording that will reveal information about the rat. Together with right-hand man Francis (Johnny Flynn, Clouds of Sils Maria), Richie (Dylan O’Brien, Bumblebee) plans to expose the snitch and allow his business to flourish with the assistance of The Outfit. A syndicate of crime families from all over the country, The Outfit has operatives everywhere and is the one that reported the mole. Who is the mole? What (or who?) is The Outfit? And is the mild-mannered cutter more involved than he claims to be? 

Having seen Rylance onstage playing Shakespeare, I’m aware of the kind of rapt attention he can command from an audience, and in all sincerity, that hasn’t been fully achieved yet on film. If anything, his roles tend toward the absurd, culminating with a nearly unwatchable turn in 2021’s Don’t Look Up. I was worried we’d be getting the same Rylance runaround here, but The Outfit represents maybe his best work on film so far, even better than his Oscar-winning role in 2015’s Bridge of Spies. The layers Rylance brings to the part, peeling them back at varied paces throughout so that you can’t get too comfortable, are brilliantly done. Once you’ve figured out the solution, Rylance sheds another veneer to reveal a sheen we never considered. 

The rest of the cast works hard to get to the same level of Rylance and uniformly succeeds, starting with Deutch as a woman Burling acts with some fatherly care toward but has more to offer than simply sitting behind a desk. O’Brien and Flynn are swell as the glorified henchman for the Big Boss, Roy (Simon Russell Beale, Into the Woods), who shares some wonderfully understated scenes with Rylance. Even those that make a minor pass through the film, like Nikki Amuka-Bird (Old), leave a pleasant waft of mystery in their wake. 

The Outfit is the kind of Sunday movie you’d have liked to see when it was a tad colder out, one with which you can hunker down. There’s not anything extra that doesn’t need to be there, with Moore making great use of the expertise of cinematographer Dick Pope (Supernova) and production designer Gemma Jackson (Aladdin). They’re both Oscar-nominated and well regarded in the industry for a reason. From head to toe, tie to laces, it’s just about a perfect corker of a film that keeps you surprised on the edge of your seat right up until the end.   

Movie Review ~ Everybody Wants Some!!

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A group of college baseball players navigate their way through the freedoms and responsibilities of unsupervised adulthood.

Stars: Blake Jenner, Tyler Hoechlin, Wyatt Russell, Ryan Guzman, Juston Street, Glen Powell, Temple Baker, J. Quinton Johnson, Will Brittain, Zoey Deutch

Director: Richard Linklater

Rated: R

Running Length: 117 minutes

Trailer Review: Here

TMMM Score: (9/10)

Review: Everybody Wants Some!! is being promoted as a “spiritual sequel” to director Richard Linklater’s cult favorite from 1993, Dazed and Confused.  While Dazed takes place on the last day of high school in 1976, EWS!! follows a team of college baseball players over the course of a long weekend in 1980 before school starts up again.  Even though there are no overlapping characters between the films, it’s not hard to imagine Blake Jenner’s leading player in EWS!! as a college-ready version of the character Wiley Wiggins played in the earlier film.

For EWS!! to play well as an almost sequel to a much loved near-classic that’s now become almost as much of a cinematic rite of passage as the various hazing sequences it showcases, it has to have something that sets it apart.  Once again, Linklater (Bernie, Boyhood, Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight) shows his knack for perfect casting by bringing together a host of handsome stars on the rise to populate his otherwise plotless observances of the last days of summer for a college baseball team.

Incoming freshman Jake Bradford (a winning, mellow Blake Jenner), arrives at his off campus housing on a Friday and spends the next three days getting to know his teammates, his surroundings, and himself.  Clearly influenced by Linklater’s own life, the character isn’t your typical meek newbie nor is he a loutish oaf that scores high on the d-bag meter.  Actually, even with its brief divergences into misogyny (there’s but one female role in the film that isn’t there to bed or bitch about), the film largely avoids the stereotypical frat boy trappings by providing actual personalities for its competitively horny young males.

Originally brought into the fold by team captain McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin, reminding me of a young Matt Dillon), Jake starts to learn the ropes from teammates like Glenn Powell’s (The Expendables 3) Finn, who can talk about anything from girls to gentrification and Wyatt Russell’s (22 Jump Street) Willoughby, a stoner that encourages everyone to “just be weird”.  There’s also the requisite dimbulb (Temple Baker), the sensible voice of reason (J. Quinton Johnson), a county-fried roommate (Will Brittain), and an easily provoked pitcher (Juston Street, the only faulty bit of character machinery in Linklater’s otherwise smooth engine of a movie) that pop up throughout the film to join in the weekend hijinks.   As the lone prominent female, Zoey Deutch (Vampire Academy) more than holds her own as a matched equal to Jake that isn’t your typical co-ed. It’s not hard to picture Deutch’s mother Lea Thompson playing the same role had the film been made thirty years ago.

Since the casting is top notch, that means the acting is skilled too and the three weeks the actors spent rehearsing all day at Linklater’s Texas compound pays off well because you walk away totally buying the characters you just watched, flaws and all.  It has the same sharp wisdom and warm hope Linklater is so good at injecting into his films and pleasantly goes against the structural norm of these college set film by following these guys only up until the first bell rings on Monday morning.

It’s not often I leave a theater already figuring out when I can swing by and catch it again but I left EWS!! plotting a return visit.  I appreciate that Linklater has a way of making his films so accessible that it’s easy to watch them over and over again and, even if you don’t get anything new out of each watch, still be entertained.

 

The Silver Bullet ~ Everybody Wants Some

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Synopsis: A group of college baseball players navigate their way through the freedoms and responsibilities of unsupervised adulthood.

Release Date:  April 15, 2016

Thoughts: For his follow-up to a career-high achievement with Boyhood, writer/director Richard Linklater has created a “spiritual sequel” to his popular 1993 comedy Dazed and Confused.  Trading D&C’s long hair, bellbottoms, and ‘70s high school setting for the porn staches, tight shorts, and college campus parties of the ‘80s, Linklater has assembled another cast of barely-knowns, several of which are likely wondering who’ll be the next breakout star ala Matthew McConaughey.  Linklater has had this one on his mind for some time and if Boyhood’s miraculous results after its slow gestation is any indication, good things come (Link)later.

Movie Review ~ Vampire Academy

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Rose, a rebellious Guardian-in-training and her best friend, Lissa – a royal vampire Princess – have been on the run when they are captured and returned to St.Vladamirs Academy, the very place where they believe their lives may be in most jeopardy.

Stars: Zoey Deutch, Lucy Fry, Danila Kozlovsky, Gabriel Byrne, Sarah Hyland, Joely Richardson, Cameron Monaghan, Sami Gayle, Claire Foy, Ashley Charles, Olga Kurylenko

Director: Mark Waters

Rated: PG-13

Running Length: 104 minutes

Trailer Review: Here

TMMM Score: (2/10)

Review: Vampire Academy sucks.  It bites.  It’s a stake through the heart of YA adaptations capitalizing on the success of franchise films like the Harry Potter series and, to a lesser extent than you might imagine, Twilight.  It’s toothless in its construction and bloodless in its execution.  Yes, my fangs are bared and my bad puns are all but used up for this cheap looking, badly acted mess that could have gone so right but finds itself oh so very wrong.

With the director of Mean Girls (Mark Waters) and the writer of Heathers (Daniel Waters, yep, they’re brothers) involved I was expecting a nice mash-up of those two films with a little bit of Jawbreaker thrown in for good measure.  Sadly, none of the sparks that made those movies a pleasure (guilty or otherwise) exist here so we’re left to wonder what in the hell went askew.

When a film isn’t screened for critics it’s usually never a positive sign but there was something that compelled me to see the film anyway, possibly hoping that this high school fantasy was just not designed for critical consumption.  Based on the first novel in Richelle Mead’s popular series, the film follows Rose (Zoey Deutch, daughter of 80’s royalty Lea Thompson and director Howard Deutch) and Lissa (Lucy Fry), two girls bonded together by an age-old prophecy and their (mis)adventures in a prestigious boarding school for vampires.

An early prologue contains so much rote exposition to bring the audience up to speed that I half expected the actors to start saying things like “I’m opening a door. I’m sitting on a bed.  I’m looking dazed at the moment”.  Filmed in such non-descript locales suggesting the filmmakers secretly filmed in IKEA showrooms, it’s not long before Rose and Lissa are back on the ground of St. Vladimrs Academy and thrust back into a dangerous plot…the one thing Daniels Waters script doesn’t bother to flesh out.

Remember that scene in Showgirls where veteran dancer Cristal Connors asks newbie Nomi Malone to rehearse with her, only to have a cat fight stop rehearsal five seconds in?  There are at least three of passages like that here with Rose getting “trained” by the hunky Dimitri (Danila Kozlovsky) in enough time for the two to engage in badly timed fight choreography that ends with them staring longingly  at each other.  While Deutch has an Ellen Page vibe about her that’s mildly engaging, Kozlovsky is pretty much just an Aqua di Gio ad come to life.

This lack of personality in its characters is really where the film trips and falls, we can excuse Deutch’s milquetoast line readings for a while but when she’s paired with Fry the tone becomes incredibly deadly.  About as appealing as a glass of room temperature milk, Fry is supposed to be a regal princess but her cracking voice and penchant for wearing ankle length skirts gives off more Amish Princess than Vampire Royal.  The costume and make-up design is across the board awful and I can’t imagine any of the women in the film were happy that they wound up with rouged cheeks that suggest a playful three year old applied it.

The film earns two whole stars for including two bits of biting dialogue that hints at the direction the film should have gone.  Both occur too late in the film to save us from abject misery but in the hands of Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace, Oblivion) and Sarah Hyland they were the most memorable moments of an entirely forgettable film.  Never deciding if it wants to be a satiric black comedy or a dewey young adult fantasy, it winds up turning to dust the moment the lights come up.

Laughably (but laudably) ending with the promise of a sequel, this movie should never have happened.  Even if the airwaves are chock full of vampire series right now, this would have been much better suited as a weekly television series because the episodic nature would have made more sense.  To the big screen the money hungry producers went, though, leaving the film to go the way of other franchise non-starters like Beautiful Creatures and The Mortal Instruments: The City of Bones.  Terrible.

The Silver Bullet ~ Vampire Academy

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Synopsis: Based on author Richelle Mead’s worldwide bestselling series, Vampire Academy tells the legend of two 17-year-old girls who attend a hidden boarding school for Moroi (mortal, peaceful vampires) and Dhampirs (half-vampire/half-human guardians).

Release Date: February 14, 2014

Thoughts: If this adaptation of Richelle Mead’s popular YA novel looks a little bit like Mean Girls meets Heathers with vampire twist, you won’t be too shocked to hear that it’s directed by Mark Waters from a script by Daniel Waters and though the two aren’t related Mark directed Mean Girls and Daniel wrote Heathers.  It’s tough to say if audiences will line up for another vampire series so soon after the Twilight saga ended and the cinematic tide has changed to zombie love…but with a sassy bite to it the movie could turn out to be a harmless guilty pleasure.