BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017) movie review

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Executive produced by the original director Ridley Scott, directed by Denis Villeneuve of last year’s hit Arrival, and written by the same screenwriter as the original, the new Blade Runner 2049 lives in the exact universe of the first film, 30 years in that future.A simple premise for those who haven’t seen the first movie: Blade Runners are hired hitmen detectives working with the police to annihilate rogue AI. The culture and ethic of the Blade Running game is called into question when it becomes personal. The Blade Runner stories are based on the novel by Philip K. Dick called “Do androids dream of electric sheep?”

Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, Jared Leto, and all of the other famous faces are perfectly cast in this follow-up film. I hesitate to call it a reboot, as it picks up the baton and runs at full pace as a stand-alone piece of work. Yet, if you missed the epic first, you will feel lost in the second. It’s all callback to the original, and a set of explanatory paragraphs on the first screen can never offer enough back story, enough power play between self-deifying creator and creation in these “replicant” stories, or enough of Harrison Ford’s character’s emotional connections to remind or prepare viewers fully for this visual bonanza.Both are art films. Futuristic, sci-fi, noir, almost neo-western, dramatic, art films. Unique. Slow pace builds in intensity to fierce action. The use of color and light, the silence then epic throwback music nodding to Vangelis’s original score, the heartbreaking potential future of relationships in a porn-addicted society that seeks fulfillment from devices before risking human contact. It could be seen as a sci-fi Her (2013).Blade Runner 2049 shows extremes. As the once emotionless regain their senses, the brutal continue to ravage without conscience. Blood and nudity, death and sensuality. The director is careful to hide much of what would be considered gore or blatant pornography just out of sight, but it’s ever-present in this dark future world. Both films were hard to watch in moments for the same reasons. Neither glamorize murder or sex. Rather they make both absolutely dark in this miserable, unlovely, lonely, future world.It’s hard to explain how these heavy films manage to show beauty, but somehow the emotions render as pure and honest, and the deserted radioactive wastelands of the films’ landscapes are simply breathtaking. The faces in the frame, often bloodstained, are flawless and offer so much insight with limited dialogue.Perfect storytelling from the start, we care about all that our main character cares about. We want answers, just as he does. We follow the same twists and turns in plot, living his existence with him, together hoping for meaning, purpose, truth, justice, and life.

WAR for THE PLANET of THE APES (2017) movie review

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Mercy, empathy, loyalty, grief. These themes transcend their opposites: hatred, misunderstanding, cruelty, apathy. In this film, two opposing sides fight for the same plot of land. Yes, it’s an Avatar and a Dances with Wolves all over again. But just as history is destined for repetition without intervention, so this film shows one side succumbing to evil claiming survival of the fittest while the other, the city of apes, merely wants to survive.Andy Serkis is Caesar, beloved and respected leader whose rescue mission skews when personal loss leads to vengeance. Steve Zahn’s character adds such necessary relief to the tension.Blood is spilled on both sides, but the new human enemy, played expertly by Woody Harrelson seems to feel nothing in the face of loss. He kills at will, wounds for sport, captures communities and watches them starve.

This is a war movie, as advertised, but it is shot-for-shot so beautiful, such a big screen wonder, that you may almost forget that the main characters are apes rather than men.Caesar’s literal journey takes sharp turns as he confronts his demons of bloodlust and unworthiness, meeting friends and foes on his own path to redemption. Don’t miss this enthralling finale’ to the trilogy.

LOGAN LUCKY (2017) movie review

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Logan Lucky flew the checkered flag before the film could turn a jumble of post-punch anticipated laugh lines into workable plot points.Soderbergh directed Oceans 11 in 2001, offering the world the perfect ensemble cast in a lively, paced, heist film with memorable hooks and twists. Another great cast joined him for his newest edition, which hoped to be another Oceans-esque playful, comedic, strategic romp, this time claiming the take from a day at the races instead of taking the house at a Casino.Channing Tatum plays good dad straight man with a plan, but he’s no Danny Ocean. Stakes were too low to pull buy in. Sadly, sunshine on the speedway, Seth MacFarlane’s fake accent, and a cutesy singing pageant girl could not fix the thing that was off as I watched and waited for the pace to pick up, the jokes to land, and for anything other than the surprise of Daniel Craig’s physical comedy to work.Admittedly, Driver’s prosthetic arm stole scenes, but the punchy potential one-liners waited for forced laughter, as most cast members delivered quirk without character development.

GLASS CASTLE (2017) movie review

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My friend Matt is always challenging me to write the story that makes me bleed. It’s the one that comes most viscerally from your gut, from your experience, from your life, from your sorrow, from your joy, from the thing that makes you tick and move forward at the same time. This film bleeds author Jeannette Wall’s life story allowing tandem past memories to engage with present conflicts.

This director Destin Daniel Cretton, who gave us Short Term 12  (2013), has a gift for telling those stories that hurt to tell.Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts give the performances of a lifetime as they attempt to parent on the run from one temporary living situation to the next, one binge drink to the next, one family fight and hungry belly and life lesson to the next.We ache with Brie Larson as she suffers and survives in her films like Short Term 12 (2013), Room (2015), and now in Glass Castle. Her character has changed her status in life and made it to New York as a writer, but her interactions with her homeless parents only force her to deal with the demons from her past.It’s a true story about a girl whose love for her father transcends his poor parenting, his cruelty, his ever-brimming promises to build life into a perfect glass castle for those he loves most. The ebb tide flows in with her belief in him and out with disappointment and carries moviegoers on the journey of forgiveness as they learn alongside her what it means to be like the tree that has lets suffering make it stronger.

KING ARTHUR: Legend of the Sword (2017) movie review

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Guy Ritchie’s new foray into old lore leaves one wanting more… wanting more clarity, consistency, and likable characters with trackable plotlines.Through experimental filming and storytelling, the age-old Arthurian legend gets blurred on screen as angry teen magicians create dream sequences that collide in ultra HD street-running and slo-mo fights. Only more herky-jerky than the filming is the dialogue that forces stuttered inside jokes, mistakable relationships, and forgettable caricatures that not even a Beckham cameo could save.Though Charlie Hunnam’s rippling abs and Viking jawline are the stuff of dreams, they are not enough to carry the whole legend and hopeful film series. And, even pert Jude Law’s portrayal of the murderous, evil-possessed uncle is baleful at best as he visits his nasty CG three-headed Ursula muse to gain yellow contacts.Tragically, the great potential in casting and directing cred perhaps became the hubris leading to defeat, for this Excalibur should have remained in the stone until editing could find the glue to bring all of the disparate pieces of this film together.

THE BIG SICK (2017) movie review

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Kumail Nanjiani as “Kumail” in THE BIG SICK. Photo by Nicole Rivelli.

It’s not the classic boy meets girl. It’s not your everyday romcom.  It’s a complex, unique story about two people trying to fit together then trying to fit into each other’s family dynamics. It’s messy and wonderful, just like real life.Moments made me supremely sad, but I also fell in love with every character individually. Each one in his or her own flawed and quirky ways became oddly likable. Ray Romano and Holly Hunter’s performances were raw and flawless. I’ve never loved them more. They play the parents of Zoe Kazan, the heroine of this little film that has won big audiences.

We follow Kumail Nanjiani’s true life story as he navigates Pakistani-American life, dreams of performing stand-up, and falls for the “wrong” girl. When she ends up in the hospital, he is left alone to make life-saving decisions and make good with her southern family, all while appeasing his own family bent on arranging his marriage.It’s a bit of a Big Fat Greek Wedding as cultural differences increase the tensions but add such humor and beauty.

Take the R rating seriously. The language is rough. The concept is tragic at times. The relationship, carnal. But get beyond that, and this film is honest, human, clumsy, comedic, and absolutely lovely.

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (2017) movie review

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The Marvel machine is up and running the sides of skyscrapers once again, spinning webs over lampposts, swinging freely through city streets.With this latest installment of Spidey in the suit, protecting NYC’s friendly neighborhood boroughs, of course he’s going to meet up with some baddies. And, who better than Michael Keaton to play “Vulture” and offset the mix.

Robert Downey Jr returns as Iron Man – this time as fatherly mentor… Or anti-mentor.

A growing all-star line-up also adds Marisa Tomei, Zendaya, and my personal fav Donald Glover to the already long list of Marvel celebs including returners Jon Favreau and Gwyneth Paltrow. The story is sweet, fresh, young, and suitable for all audiences, I believe.Somehow it’s cool because it doesn’t fight to stay cool; it just builds on confidence and lets Homecoming be the coming-of-age story it’s meant to be.Where both Maguire and Garfield’s Spideys fueled their flames of revenge, young Tom Holland seems to fan sparks of curiosity, hope, and an indefatigable sense of personal justice giving the film an upbeat, playful tone.

DUNKIRK (2017) movie review

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On land: one week. At sea: one day. In the air: one hour.

This is battle. It’s the surging rush, the scavenging rescues, the silence of the skies broken by bullets and blasts. We wind down the empty streets of the town of Dunkirk onto the terror-laden beaches following one young man. He’s too young. He’s unassuming. He’s fearful but bold. Waiting on a beach with 400,000 men, waiting for unpromised relief and rescue. It’s too early in the war for Churchill to relieve them. They are sitting ducks.Wandering the beach means attempting to catch a floating vessel on rough seas when the tides are right. It means floating away only to be taken out by torpedoes or bombs from the air. It means restless lines of hopeful men surviving minute by minute until help can arrive.And it does. Help drives toward Dunkirk in small yachts and cruisers driven by men and women who answer the British Navy’s call to help evacuate the soldiers. In this story, one older man and his young son set off picking up any that they can, saving lives from dim waters and death.Christopher Nolan offers the world a masterpiece in this thrice-told tale. Capturing practical effects on film, utilizing thousands of extras, a large fleet of actual boats from the event, and the first ever hand-held IMAX camera, Nolan recreated one of the most moving true stories from World War II. Hans Zimmer’s score ignites tension as it sets a heartbeat and a ticking clock just above the deadly waves. I have not experienced this type of non-stop pace with so little dialogue since Mad Max: Fury Road, and the brilliant cinematography almost gives this film a Malick-esque feel, like Tree of Life offering visuals pieced out and reconnecting in a non-linear narrative.

Capturing three human stories, we fight from land, sea, and air. We wash in and out of the fateful, frothy tide with the boy. We maneuver through the waters of the English Channel with the older man whose own face is creased with a torturous understanding of battle, empathy, and loss. And we dash the horizon in the cockpit of a fighter plane attempting to gauge fuel and ammunition levels while chasing the nazi fighters picking off the boats and lines of waiting men.It was too early in the war to send help to these beaches. It was years before the battle would find its way to yet another French beach called Normandy. This story is tragic but redemptive, both exhausting and exhilarating.Too many men lost their lives in those short days, and if civilians hadn’t risked theirs and utilized what they now attribute as their “Dunkirk Spirit,” the war could have gone very differently.

 

Here is an interview with the director Christopher Nolan, and another article offering perspective from a veteran who experienced the evacuation at Dunkirk.

If you’d like to read more on the Battle of Dunkirk, or on the making of this film (linked here).

GET OUT (2017) movie review

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Don’t watch it alone. Or in the dark. It’s a horror film, but it’s also one of the sharpest and most poignant social commentaries to date.Just as SNL can tackle any political joust adeptly through comedy, so somehow this innocent seeming horror flick lays out an eerie Lottery-esque (a la Shirley Jackson) satire and allows a unique look at perceptions from the eyes of black Americans regarding common stereotypes around interracial coupling, police brutality, economic status levels, even physical make-up.
 The entire film builds smoothly and thoughtfully to its absolutely terrifying finale. Know the genre and the rating going in, as it is rife with hard R language and frightening content – including a few jump scares.Throughout, the bread crumbs are there to be found. (Without spoilers), watch for a reference to picking cotton, parallels between the gorgeous photographs in the beginning and the layers of dialogue, and my favorite: the famous slogan (look up its origin) “a mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

LOST CITY OF Z (2017) movie review

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Remove the pristine profile shots of Charlie Hunnam’s jawline and the darkened jungle B roll and you’ve lost 80% of this film. If only that was it’s only flaw. Sadly, themes and scenes do not connect. Called to the jungle, the men move forward as mapmakers, explorers, and discoverers attempting to make their marks on history as they walk deadly terrain, meet with danger, and never quite find what they are looking for. Sadly, neither do audience members as the story muddles on.  The main character’s initial drive to regain family status too quickly translates to the goal of personal glory. Robert Pattinson, a bad casting decision, plays the mumbling, no talent co-explorer who helps lead a team of forgettable allies who lack enough purpose and/or enough backstory to validate rants or bouts with jungle-born illnesses.  Even the addition of racial tensions in the early 1900s and a dash of feminist debate fall flat, and both come to no more than fluffy exposition and pointless conjecture for a plot leading nowhere. In the same way, Hunnam’s wanderlust prevails over practicalities and sends him over and over back into the jungle on fruitless endeavors to find a City that stays lost.