Delayed Reaction: Rashomon

The Pitch: The same story of a murder told from many perspectives.

Rashomon's reputation precedes it. I know I've referenced it a dozen times at least on this blog and I hadn't seen it until now. I don't know if it was the first film to employ conflicting narratives, but it's certainly the one most associated with it. I love the simplicity of the film: one story told by four different people. They each have their own agenda when telling their version, so each story is different enough to not make things repetitive. I suppose the Woodcutter's version is supposed to be the most definitive, but I still don't trust all of it.

I'm a sucker for this story structure. Ever since I saw that episode of the Alvin and the Chipmunks animated series as a kid that told all three chipmunk's version of the day's events (I think it had something to do with one of Dave's things breaking or a mess of some sort. I should really track it down), I've been fascinated by subjective views of objective events. Basically, this was a very easy sell for me. And a pretty short movie to boot.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Midnight Special

The Pitch: Sort of like a late 70s/early 80s Stephen Spielberg movie.

Last year, I saw the same trailer for this movie repeatedly at my local theater. I think the release got pushed back at some point, because they showed this preview for far too long to have been released as scheduled. No matter how many times I saw the trailer. I had no idea what it was about. (My best guess at the time: It's about people asking questions and turning off their headlights while driving). All the TV spots I saw didn't clarify matters either. I even remember seeing a review or two that didn't answer much. So, on the strength of how much I love Jeff Nichols' other 2016 movie (Loving) I decided to give Midnight Special a try. It turns out, the trailers weren't hiding much. This is a movie that only tells you about 70% of the story. I like when a screenplay holds something back. The feeling that the story isn't limited to what the audience sees is appealing. It's a tricky balance though, because if enough of the story isn't told, it can become frustrating. Midnight Special teeters on that line.

Nichols assembled a strong cast. Michael Shannon gets to play things pretty straight. Normally, if you told me he's in a movie with "aliens", I'd've assumed he was the lead alien. Joel Edgerton and Kirsten Dunst do good work that doesn't particularly stand out. It's nice seeing Adam Driver playing a restrained role. Between Girls and The Force Awakens, I sometimes forget that he can display emotions other than intensity and rage. The kid got to hide behind his glasses and the dark of night a lot, but he was pretty good as well.

Side thought: Did the glimpses of that advanced world look an awful lot like Tomorrowland to anyone else?

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Chef

The Pitch: Jon Favreau wants to make you hungry.

Chef is a vanity project. The plot is thin and the pace is listless. I question the realism and I can't shake the feeling that Favreau learned about Twitter only shortly before writing the screenplay. Despite all this, I found it hard to resists its charms. Favreau calls in a bunch of his friends and collaborators to fill out the cast. So, people like Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr, and Dustin Hoffman get to show up for a bit and John Leguizamo and Sofia Vergara stay around longer to make more of an impression. The kid, Emjay Anthony, is quite good for a ten-year-old. The food looked delicious. I ended up eating an earlier dinner than I intended right after watching the movie. It's an oddly-paced film. The entirety of the road trip in the food truck, right around when most films would be building to the highest point of tension, feels more like a victory lap. The traditional three act structure is subverted in favor of just letting the movie breathe. Everything works out in the end and I never entertained the notion that it wouldn't. There's much worse ways to spend a couple hours.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Look of Silence

The Pitch: Like The Act of Killing, but less disturbing.

I don't have a single "type" of movie that appeals to me, but "Indonesian documentary about genocide" sounds like the opposite of what my type would be. Ok. That's not true. I loved The Raid (Indonesian) and all sorts of documentaries. I've seen my fair share of Holocaust movies too. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that The Look of Silence is a hard sell.

It's a companion piece with The Act of Killing. While The Act of Killing focused on the killers, The Look of Silence is about the victims. Either way, it is unbelievable stuff. Back in 1965, after a coup, the government of Indonesia systematically killed anyone opposing them (mainly communists). It's estimated that one million people were slaughtered. The men who committed these murders have been in power of the government ever since and never had to repent for these savage killings. Many look back on it with pride and levity. The Look of Silence follows the younger brother of one of the men killed as he confronts the men responsible for the killings. Initially, he pretends to be there to test their eyesight for glasses, but he slowly reveals himself over time. Those scenes are interspersed with footage of two men walking through how they murdered these prisoners 50 years ago. They even mention by name the man's brother. We are never given the name of this man, by the way. He wished to remain anonymous for his safety. Many names in the closing credits are also listed as 'anonymous' too. If you are looking for a sign that a documentary is about some serious shit, crew members wishing to remain anonymous is a great indicator.

This film is chilling and at times darkly comedic. Take for example the mention by some of the murderers that the way to prevent going mad from all the killings is to drink the victims' blood. It's an absurd solution to -you know- feeling guilt like a well-adjusted person should, but these men are completely serious about it. They truly believe that if you drink a man's blood, you won't go mad from guilt*. I wanted to laugh at the stupidity of the idea but I was too busy being disturbed by it. The film is also a great study in how no one takes the blame for what they've done. For all the men the anonymous man interviews, there's always a man higher up telling him to do these awful things or an insistence that he didn't know what was going on. It's not really their fault, they argue. They were just doing what they were told. That much can be easily applied to situations in any country, culture, or time period.

*I'd argue that there's some causation vs. correlation going on here. If you are insane enough to drink a man's blood, you are likely not going to feel guilty about slaughtering dozens of people.
 
I'm going to stop there, simply because digging into this deeper is going to really bum me out. I definitely recommend seeing this, although, have a Reese Witherspoon comedy prepared to follow it just in case you need the jolt of light-heartedness.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Free Fire

Formula: Shoot 'Em Up * The Nice Guys

Movies don't have to be hard. At least, they don't have to look hard. Way too often, people look to whatever movie is doing the toughest things (complex effects, dramatic performances, intricate shots, convoluted plot) as the best. There's some truth to that. If you want to look at movie quality as an objective thing - and lord knows I have that tendency - those are some of the things that hold a lot of weight for good reason. However, movies can be simple too and still be great.

Free Fire is a very simple movie. It's the closest thing film has to a bottle episode. Here's the movie: In the late 1970s, a gun deal goes wrong and everyone gets stuck in a shootout. That's it. The movie spends a little bit of time introducing the players. Justine (Brie Larson) is the intermediary between some IRA members and some gun sellers. The IRA members, Chris (Cillian Murphy) and Frank (Michael Smiley) are very suspicious of everyone. The gun sellers are represented by hired gun, Ord (Armie Hammer), former black panther, Martin (Babou Ceesay), and insufferable South African, Vernon (Sharlto Copely) who rubs everyone the wrong way. Both sides have a couple grunts and it turns out that those grunts have personal issues with each other that escalate until shots are fired. Everyone takes sides and takes cover. Then it's a matter of seeing who gets out alive with either the money, the guns, or both. I'm a big fan of this structure because it's simple, character-driven story telling: setup characters, put them in a place, and see what happens.

There is a risk to doing this. When you take away the importance of plotting, everything else has to be on point. If you don't like the characters, gunfights, or the humor, then I can't do anything to convince you to like the movie. Luckily for me, the tone worked perfectly. Sharlto Coplely is lovably hateable. Everyone else has an "I'm getting too old for this shit" vibe or simply seem bothered by the inconvenience of the gunfight. I don't know if any character actually says, "Are we really doing this?" but they are all thinking it. I loved tracking who is shifting allegiances and the sub-feuds going on. I loved keeping track of the geography of the room and who was still in play. Between The Nice Guys and now this*, I've accepted that I'm a fan of the late 70's as a setting. All of it worked for me and in a tight 90 minute package.

*Not to mention 20th Century Women, The Get Down on Netflix, and Inherent Vice not that long ago.

That's not to say it's perfect. More than once it felt like they should've been able to get out of the gunfight rather than escalate matters. Just about everyone gets shot in the leg eventually, so everyone spends 90% of their time crawling around on their stomachs. It got a little hard to remember where everyone was in relation to everyone else at times. While I found Copely's character endearing, others may find him only annoying. The characters could definitely be better drawn (although it isn't needed). None of this bothered me enough to spoil my enjoyment. I could see others having a harder time with it.

Judging by the paltry opening weekend box office numbers (a sub-$1000 per theater average on over 1000 screens) not everyone was as drawn to this movie as I was. It's for a niche audience, but if you are the type of person who gets any thrill at all out of Smokin' Aces, Shoot 'em Up, or Guy Richie's earlier movies, then you'll find a lot to enjoy here.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend 

Delayed Reaction: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The Pitch: It's all in the title, right?

This is one of those films that keeps popping back up. It was ignored when it first came out, but assorted critics love to bring it up now as a hidden gem. With Casey Affleck all over this most recent award season, it's been even more prominent, since it got Affleck his first Oscar nomination.

As soon as I started it, I regretted not seeing this film on Bluray or HD. Even on a DVD, the cinematography looks great. It has the feeling of a lived in western and uses the landscape well. It probably didn't need to be as long, but if it meant a couple more shots of characters standing in a prairie field, I'm fine with it. Speaking of the length, this really is long for how slow it is. I was prepared for the length and pacing, so it didn't bother me as much as it has for those unprepared for it.

I love a cast like this that gets better over time. If I would've seen this when I came out, I would've been like "Oh, it's Brad Pitt and Ben's brother and that woman from that new Showtime show and a bunch of white guys with facial hair." Now, I'm like, Oh, it's Brad Pitt, and the Affleck brother who actually gets nominated for his acting, and the wonderful Mary Louise Parker from Weeds, and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and Sam Rockwell (who is great in everything), and Paul Schneider from Parks & Rec before they wiped him of the earth, and noted Western character actor Garret Dillahunt, and Sam Shepard (who I should've recognized even in 2007 as 'that guy from that other movie') and a bunch of other white guys with facial hair.". The difference ten years can make.

A few years ago, I saw writer/director Andrew Dominik's movie Killing Them Softly and didn't care for it. I was prepared to write-off TAoJJbtCRF (my shorthand for this long-ass title) as another director whose appeal is lost on me. As it turns out, I liked TAoJJbtCRF enough that now I want to go back and rewatch Killing Them Softly to see if I missed something.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Girls: A Character Ranking

Girls ended Sunday after a six year run as one of the most divisive and think-piece heavy series of its time. It's an imperfect and often misunderstood series. I loved a lot of things about it, but mostly, I liked how well-drawn the character were. They weren't meant as a representative swath of millennials. They were a very specific and deeply flawed collection of people. Given that, I figure the best way for me to look back on this series is my own ranking of the main characters from who I liked the most to the least.

(I picked ten main and recurring characters based on a fuzzy calculus that I didn't put enough thought into to explain now)

Hannah
I'm sorry, but if Hannah isn't your pick, I don't know why you stuck with this show. Every other character could disappear for several episodes at a time. Only Hannah was always there. She is perhaps the most frustrating character in a series known frustrating characters. From the very first episode, with her "voice of my generation" proclamation, she annoyed people. I enjoyed how unlikable she could be. Lena Dunham built Hannah with warts and all but never turned on the character. Hannah also gets bonus points because Dunham created the series and I give out bonus points however the hell I want.

Adam
He is a raw nerve of a character who managed to be the romantic male lead for several seasons. That shouldn't work. You'll notice that I gave a lot of credit to characters who won me over throughout the series run as opposed to always being likable and Adam is chief among those. I thought he was a douche bag early on and by the end of the first season, they completely upended my perception of him. From then on, it was like watching Pinocchio figure out how to be a real boy. The man has demons but he tries to figure them out. It didn't work all the time, but it was always interesting to see him try. And yes, he gets bonus points because Adam Driver is in a lot of movies that I really like (The Force Awakens, Inside Llewyn Davis).

Elijah
Another character I didn't care for early on. In those last two seasons, when Andrew Rannells was a lot more available, he became the heart of his own show within the show. More than a little of this high ranking is because he was so delightful in "The Bounce", trying out for White Men Can't Jump: The Musical.

Shoshanna
Zosia Mamet was the least utilized part of the central quartet. The final season even made an afterthought or her falling out with the group (which made thematic sense). When Mamet was used though, she was great. Remember when she did crack? Oh, Shosh.

Marnie
Where Hannah fully admitted to her flaws and tried to wear them like badges of honor, Marnie refused to admit that she was a mess and that made her very, very unlikable a lot of the times. But then, you get something like "The Panic in Central Park" or her in the series finale and you realize that she's the friend you've had for too long to ever get rid of. She has to lose some points though for all the damn singing.

Ray
Ray is the character I could most see myself wanting to spend a day with. His pessimistic vibe jibes with me, even though a whole day of it would get old. The show never knew what to do with Alex Karpovsky for more than an episode or two. He'd probably be higher on my list if he had spent more time with Shosh and less with Marnie.

Jessa
Her specific branch of chaos didn't work for me. She had some great, complex stuff to do pretty often. Just as often though, it seemed like the show was trying to make a point about how destructive she could be. Of the main four, she spend the most time without it being clear that the show had any idea what to do with her. But when she was good, she was damn good.

Loreen Horvath
Of Hannah's parents, Loreen is the one who had no choice in her late-life upending. It's pretty tragic following her after her marriage falls apart. While she gets a few moments that show that she will make it through this, the show is too interested in wallowing with her late. And, early on, she doesn't have as much to do.

Tad Horvath
I respect the direction they took his character, but his side of the split with Loreen was treated much more comically and had less meat to it.

Desi
He was in too many episodes to not include him. He's a mess though, and the less said about him, the better. Ebon Moss-Bachrach sure could get a laugh from being pathetic though.

TV Show Reaction: Big Little Lies

It's time for me to take another stab at talking about TV. I've made attempts to make TV discussion a part of the blog before. I kept up with everything I watched in my DVR Purges for a long time but that wore me out. I did the Weekly 10 for a while too. That didn't mesh well with the other Reactions. Once or twice a year, I will start taking detailed notes about everything I watch, with plans to turn it into something to post, but that turns watching things into homework, which is the last thing I want to do. One-off discussions seem like the best way to go. I'm not going to set any time-tables (like "once a week" or "after all finales"). Just, when I have time and the desire to talk about a show that struck me.

This time, I want to take a look at Big Little Lies. I'm going to assume that if you are reading this, you have seen the show, so I'm not going to talk around spoilers or given unneeded exposition.

Big Little Lies is a series that used a terrific cast and great performances all around to make up for some of the less appealing elements. The good far outweighed the bad. For me, Reese Witherspoon is what brought me to this (teaming with her Wild director, btw). Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, etc. are all actresses by themselves who wouldn't be enough to pull me in. Witherspoon on TV got my attention. She's never refused TV work*, but she isn't pulled into it very often. Big Little Lies is far more than a Reese Witherspoon vehicle though.

*She was on The Muppets as recently as 2015 in a guest spot. Still trying to figure that one out.

I have no idea how the Emmys are going to play out. Witherspoon, Kidman, and Woodley could all be vying for a lead actress trophy with Laura Dern making a strong argument for supporting actress. Lead actress splits in a very interesting way. Woodley is the functional lead. She the POV and entry point character, especially early on. On paper, you'd think it was her story. Witherspoon and Kidman have the flashier roles, but in much different ways. Witherspoon as Madeline is a force of personality. She takes what sounds more like a supporting role (the queen bee of Monterey and best friend/support-system for Kidman and Woodley's characters) and makes her into every bit as complex and troubled a character. She's also a lot of fun. The dinner with Nathan, Bonnie, and Ed is awkward and hilarious. Then there's Kidman as Celeste. That's a story that easily could've turned to melodrama and it didn't. She was a victim without losing her agency as a character. All three of their stories could've been the center of a mini-series or movie by itself.

And the leads have a lot to play off. The young cast was terrific. Darby Camp and Iain Armitage (Chloe and Ziggy) gave damn good performances. Children that young can often be distractions or annoyances, yet I was always happy to see them show up in a scene. Laura Dern is efficient with her scenes. Zoe Kravitz is a little under-served, to the point that her being the one who kills Perry is a little too unexpected. Speaking of Perry, the men in the cast are pretty great too. Remember when Adam Scott used to show up in things as the asshole (Step Brothers, anyone)? Well, that's not the case anymore. Ed isn't far from Ben Wayatt. He's just a super rich version who had no desire to work in the public sector. Alexander Skarsgard is a monster as Perry, but adds just enough shades to still be human. It's easy to see what about Nathan (James Tupper) makes him hard for Madeline to get over and what makes her hate him. Oh, and it doesn't seem like Bad Teacher and Paranormal Activity were all that long ago. I didn't realize Kathryn Newton was the same girl from both of those.

The murder flash forwards and townspeople as Greek chorus became a distraction quickly. That's baked into the source material, but after the first episode, it got in the way. Most shows include interview commentary and flash forwards to mask a lack of a compelling narrative in the present. Big Little Lies is the rare show that includes those things to its detriment. It hedges its bets, thinking that constant reminders of a murder will keep things lively. It turns out, the characters, writing, and direction are plenty engaging on their own. It's nice being able to call a show not confident enough rather than overconfident. In fact, the constant foreshadowing of this death almost ruined that moment for me. Perry's death ended up feeling required more than fitting and how it happened became a math problem (in the way that a big punchline in a Modern Family episode feels reverse-engineered when it happens). Bonnie is a nice-left field choice to have pushed him. I'm not sure I even needed that answer though.

Maybe I should clarify. Going into the finale, I wanted to know if Madeline and Ed get past their marital problems. I wanted to know if Celeste could rescue herself from her abusive relationship. I wanted to know if Jane could come to terms with her past. I wanted to know if this blood feud between Madeline and Renata could be resolved. If it took Perry's death to get there, great. It felt like they were teasing the death angle so much like "hang in there. It'll all be worth it in the end", when I was already enjoying what was happening.

So, if my big complaint about a series is that it was better than it gave itself credit for, that's a good thing. It ended in a good place. Even though someone is watching them now, I don't need to find out more. I'm hoping more networks can pull in big stars for brief stints like this without needing Ryan Murphy to have his name attached to it. I could go on longer and flesh out some points better, but I've already taken far too long to come out with this. That was an enjoyable show.

Delayed Reaction: Fast Times at Ridgemont High

The Pitch: Before they were at Animal House...

It's hard to remember that I hadn't seen Fast Times before. It's such a famous movie that I've seen half the scenes and already know all the best jokes. That didn't end up being a problem though once I finally did get around to it, because the whole movie is episodic; a collection of smaller stories. If you map it out, it's a wonder that it plays together so well. At first glance, it's easy to lump Fast Times in with the rest of the teen sex comedies of the 80's. But, Cameron Crowe's script and Amy Heckerling's direction prevent that. There's an honesty to it that a Porky's lacks. The cast is as good as you will find for a high school comedy. I get why Sean Penn had to work so hard to get away from his Spicoli past. I didn't even recognize Jennifer Jason Leigh because she's so young. Judge Reinhold walks the line between an everyman and a creep. I'm bothered by the fact that Robert Romanus looks so familiar, but from checking IMDB, I can't place him in anything else I've seen, aside from a couple guest appearances. I definitely recognize him from something though. Am I really so familiar with this film going in that I already recognize the cast? And, Phoebe Cates. I have to say, that scene (you know which one) is a little different than I thought. Despite being so famous, it's pretty insignificant to the plot and comes and goes quickly. I think every other show and movie that has parodied it have been twice as long as the real thing. It doesn't take much digging to realize that much of the teen comedies of the 80s were complete crap (like any decade), but Fast Times deservedly stands out and holds up incredibly well.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Mr. Right

The Pitch: But, has Anna Kendrick ever been a sociopath?

This movie is Knight & Day by way of God Bless America. The latter movie I adore despite all its rough edges. The former is a movie that's better in concept than execution, which is probably why its been done so many times (also see Killers or Mr. & Mrs. Smith for other variations).

I enjoyed this stupid little movie. I don't buy Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell as a couple, but I love them as a duo. Their energies match. They have a student/teacher dynamic. She has great enthusiasm and he plays the "old pro" well. They should work together again. The RZA is pretty wonderful as well. It's a fun throwaway part that keeps finding ways to show up throughout the movie.

The direction is entirely invasive. Some of that is by design. This is an over the top movie. Rockwell regularly dodges bullets as parts of dance routines. There's no way to play that straight. The stunt work is distractingly unconvincing. And what was that knife throwing scene about? The movie is clearly choppy for comedic effect, and that will only bother you if you aren't otherwise liking the movie. I would've watched 90 minutes of Anna Kendrick getting drunk in her closet or having repeated meet-cutes with Rockwell, so it didn't matter if nothing else in the story was plausible.

Anna Kendrick goes from appalled by what Rockwell does to being completely fine with it far too quickly. So quickly that even Rockwell can't believe it. Similar to the protagonists in God Bless America, it's better the less I think about the morality of it. This isn't a movie that I would put at the top of any list. It's a dumb, good movie with two leads who are always good.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Lobster

The Pitch: It'll be like a Spike Jonze movie but not made by Spike Jonze.

I don't know what to do with The Lobster. I liked it. I'm just not sure what to do with it. Yorgos Lanthimos has a wicked screenplay that plays by its own rules. It's a fantastic deconstruction of the social constructs surrounding being in relationships and what we do to find and maintain them. It's all very clever. At a point, the movie does feel burdened by the style. Early on, while I was so busy figuring out the rules of the world, I didn't notice it. Once David (Collin Farrell) left the facility, I got more distracted. Everyone is so bound by the way they needed to deliver the lines that it didn't feel like it was getting as much out of a cast with Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and John C. Reilly as it could've. Actually, Reilly was a perfect fit in the world. Farrell and Weisz only occasionally. I have trouble with absurdism sometimes. The way it's used here is to have characters do and say ridiculous things and treat it like it's normal. This can easily dip into being self-aware.

Maybe, the better way to explain is with my One Big Leap principle. I think The Lobster makes two big leaps. The world that these characters live in is one leap. The way the characters act is another, because I don't see the humanity in them consistently. You could argue that both are part of the same conceit you have to give the movie. That's a bit much though. It's like the movie is in a world created by Charlie Kaufman filled with Wes Anderson characters. It was missing some grounding. A lot of this is just taste. I'm not on quite the right frequency for it.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: The Fate of the Furious

Formula: Furious 7 - Paul Walker

There isn't much to say about The Fate of the Furious (or, F8, as I'll refer to it for the rest of this post). It's hard to call something critic-proof, but F8 applies as well as anything. Hell, it's even America-proof. This franchise is a global sensation. And who can blame the world for loving it? It's a globe-hopping adventure with a multi-cultural cast of cartoon characters, who can be dubbed over without taking away any of their essence. Each film raises the stakes with gleeful one-upmanship. You can talk about all the superhero movies you want, but I'd argue that the most unstoppable franchise in the world right now is this one. And F8 maintains that.

I've seen all the movies at this point; the last several in theaters. That said, I'm not going to pretend that I remember what happened in any of them. F8 continues with the reverse-engineering of previous installments, and finds a way to add a main villain who is actually "the one behind it all" (named Sypher, played by Charlize Theron), for real this time. The real selling point of F8 is that she's able to recruit Dom (Vin Diesel) to turn on the rest of the protagonists. That makes it Dom vs. the family. There's some noise about nuclear codes and military bases that I didn't pay attention to. No one is meant to. Just know that it's Vin Deisel, Charlize Theron, and that giant Norwegian ginger from Game of Thrones vs. everyone else.

F8 is an action scene delivery service. It begins with a throwback car race that reminds you that when the series began, it was about the underground racing scene and seeing how many of the most attractive people it could fit in one frame. Some plot business happens, then a brief car chase and an over-the-top prison break. After that, some more plot to get to a crazy sequence in New York City involving remote controlled cars - a lot of them. Some more story happens, and finally, they fight a submarine on a giant ice sheet. All of these sequences look expensive as hell and are massive. None of it is remotely plausible, and no one really cares. The creativity of this production crew is impressive. Now are these well-staged action sequences? Not really. I think the high point for that is still F6, taking down a plane and all. The secret to great action set-pieces is controlled chaos. Anyone can make things blow up. The greats blow things up, know why they are blowing up, have a sense of geography for everything that's happening before and after, and conveys this on screen to the audience. Mad Max: Fury Road is a great example of that. F8 brings the chaos. There's a couple shots that are almost break-taking in the scope and complexity of the undertaking. Not a lot of it makes much sense though. No matter how impracticable the cars or the size of the city, the main characters are always able to show up at the right time in the right place. Sequences often involve a dozen moving parts and only a couple are actually explained. When the protagonists are being chased by a mobile army at the end, they appear to be perpetually pursued by about a dozen vehicles, no matter how many they take out, and with no indication as to where (or when) these reinforcements are coming from. These are the kind of nitpicky things that didn't stop me from enjoying the movie while I watched it. However, they are why this movie won't be remembered as a classic of the genre or even the best of the franchise.

The size of the cast by now in the series is unwieldy. I've always been impressed by how well the franchise handles turnover though. Diesel is perhaps the only essential cast member now, and even that is debatable. So, the loss of Paul Walker (and by extension, Jordana Brewster) doesn't cast a pall over the film. Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Tej (Ludacris), and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) are all well enough established by now that they only need a few lines to make their presences known. I don't blame Diesel for reportedly butting heads with Dwayne Johnson on the set of this movie, because Hobbs is inching ever close to lead status. He is the Hulk in this movie, and it's really entertaining to see how superhuman they make him. He doesn't just hit people. He's a wrecking ball. Nathalie Emmanuel isn't developed much beyond where she was in the last movie. She feels like a part of the team, and that's enough for now. Scott Eastwood is introduced as a potential replacement for Kurt Russell's Mr. Nobody*. Jason Statham gets to be a good guy and have some silly fun. Charlize Theron hams it up. I don't think anyone would argue that she is giving her A-game nor was that required of her. She could either come back for F9 or never be seen again. I'd be fine either way.

*He's also a savvy Paul Walker stand in if it turned out that audiences needed a traditional handsome white guy in the group. Based on F8 though, he's not essential.

The Fast and the Furious franchise isn't going away. Any loses domestically are more than being made up for internationally, where it just broke the worldwide opening weekend box office record, despite making only 40% of what The Force Awakens did in the US. F8 proved that qualitatively, the rotating chair of directors can make a difference on the end product. F. Gary Gray did fine, but he's no Justin Lin at making this type of film. It's not a great movie, but it is an entertaining movie. I had fun, even though I'll remember approximately 3% of the plot by the time the next film in the series is released. 

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend 

Delayed Reaction: Beautiful Creatures

The Pitch: It's like Twilight, but in the deep south, and with witches instead of vampires, which it totally different.

What's going on with this cast? It's got young Han Solo, Aldren Ehrenreich. His best friend is Thomas Mann, who I loved in Me & Earl & The Dying Girl. There's Emmy Rossum who I really expected to have more of a film career by now, because she's awesome. This movie even allows me to check off another movie from my filmography stalking of Zoey Deutch. And I haven't even gotten to Viola Davis and Emma Thompson. Jeremy Irons too. And character actress Margo Martindale. Really, Alice Englert is the only person who I didn't already have a fondness for going in. This is a much better cast than the movie deserves.

And the cast carries it. I don't care much about the story. In fact, I checked out pretty quickly when it came to all the talk of witches casters and curses. Ehrenreich and Englert are charming together. Davis and Irons give a lot of gravity to pretty rote exposition. Emma Thompson is having a lot of fun as the villain. Rossum knows that her character is the scene-stealer and commands the screen like it. If this cast was assembled for something better than a watered down Twilight with a heavy southern twang, I would have loved this.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

TV Reaction: 13 Reasons Why

That was a hell of a thing.

I don't do a lot of TV discussions (which I need to fix). Part of the reason is because the nature of TV shows, several parts told over a longer amount of time, dilutes the impact in a way that doesn't happen in film. I actually prefer what shows do over movies, but there's no denying that they are different discussions to have. I had to say something about 13 Reasons Why though. It's rare that a show emotionally flattens me like this. In the past few years, maybe The Leftovers is the only other show that has.

Since I'm not sure how many people have watched this series yet, and I'm hoping to convince people to do so, I'm going to hold off on any overt spoilers until the end, which will be labelled.

The concept is pretty simple: A high school girl, Hannah (Katherine Langford) commits suicide and leaves tapes for the people she holds responsible for it. 13 tapes. 13 episodes. The tapes are passed around by those people and kept secret from everyone else. The show begins when Clay (Dylan Minnette) receives the tapes and slowly listens through them. The show is part teen-drama, part mystery, part conspiracy, part romance, and so much more. It tells the dual narrative of the months leading up to Hannah's suicide and the fallout from it.
More than anything, it is a character study. That makes the two lead roles vitally important. Katherine Langford is a star. She is an absolute star. I was stunned to see how few credits she had on IMDB, because she is so polished and perfect in this. Dylan Minnette has a lot more experience, but I was still surprised that he was so good in this as well. Just as importantly, the two actors have incredible chemistry together. And it doesn't stop there. This has a great young cast. With one notable exception, every person in the tapes is a multi-dimensional character with likable and unlikable traits. In the high school cast, I only recognized Minnette and Miles Heizer (Drew from Parenthood). I wouldn't be surprised if ten years from now, the likes of Alisha Boe, Christian Navarro, Devin Druid, Brandon Flynn, Ajiona Alexus, Justin Prentice, and others will be looked at as a "murderers row" the way that the Freak and Geeks cast is now. I also need to single out Kate Walsh in the adult cast who is devastating as Hannah's grieving mother.

I normally say that the best shows/movies/books are not the most perfect ones. It's about the good far outweighing the bad. 13 Reasons Why has some problems. Some episodes need the full hour. Others, many in the middle, don't have enough content to justify the length. Clay stalls for time a lot, and that gets very frustrating. The show writes checks it can't cash several times, ominously alluding to things that aren't worth the build-up. It's the kind of show that if you start picking at it, it completely falls apart. And there's the core idea of laying the blame for one's actions on someone else, which is a non-starter a segment of the potential audience.

All that's fine though, because when 13 Reasons Why works, it is so damn good. The collection of directors (including 2 episodes directed by Spotlight director Tom McCarthy) do an excellent job weaving the past and the present together. They even manage to insert dream sequences and fake outs without making them feel like cheap tricks. The series is unflinching. I've never seen a Netflix series with content disclaimers before them, and they are needed. There is no romanticizing about what happens to Hannah [and others]. At times, it is brutal to watch. Where most shows would cut away (pun not intended), it doesn't. Even something as simple as teenagers swearing in a real way was a refreshing change. What hit me the hardest was the inevitability. Hannah dies and there's no way around it. That was always there. Every time Hannah and Clay hit it off. Every time it looks like Hannah has made the friend or connection that could save her. The incapability wrecked me. And, the show isn't a slog to get through. While the dramatic beats are what will stay with me, the mystery of it all is told in such a compelling way that I couldn't stop watching. Hannah's story expands and compounds. Like in life, the butterfly effect leads everything to this awful conclusion, and it's fascinating to see how one innocuous comment or different perspective can change everything.

That's about all I'm going to say to convince anyone who hasn't watched yet. It's an imperfect show that has moments that are as good as anything you are going to see. A lot of moments. That's enough to make it essential viewing for me. It's not an easy watch. It's not "homework TV" though. Once you start, it has a propulsive narrative that will hook you in. I'd have something lighter to watch at the ready though for when you finish. It'll put you through an emotional wringer.

After the Credits:

I just have a few thoughts that move into spoiler territory.

-That head bandage did so much of the work for the directors. It's a trick I've seen used before, but I love the simplicity. Clay has a bandage on his head = present. No bandage = past.

-I'm undecided about Bryce. He's the only irredeemable character. One argument is that there needs to be one true villain in the story to make everything palatable. Without him being truly evil, it would make it harder to find the shades of grey in Justin's actions, for example. The other argument though is that it lets everyone off the hook. Bryce raped two girls. Bryce sent Justin's picture of Hannah out. While everyone killed Hannah Baker, Bryce is the only one essential to her death.

-Similarly, I don't see why everyone banded together against Clay so strongly. His tape wasn't that bad. Not bad for him, that is. It devastated him to find out that he could've stopped this, but there's nothing there that would actually hurt him if he released the tapes to the public. It only hurts him internally. Everyone else has their own motivations (Zach, Marcus, and Courtney, for instance, have relatively minor offenses  but have a lot more to lose if the tapes become public), but I don't buy the slow rate at which people began siding with Clay.

-Jeff. Poor Jeff. In any other show, his death would be a central event. Part of what I love about 13 Reasons Why is how it is completely secondary Jeff's story is. They are canny with how they hide the reveal. I just like the Jeff character though. As far as the show is concerned, he's the only good person at that school. Zach thinks he is the nice-guy jock, but that title actually belongs to Jeff*. It isn't a reach to suggest that if Jeff was still around to push and prod Clay and otherwise balance out other groups, not to mention easing Hannah's disgust with Sheri from before the accident, maybe Hannah would still be alive. A lot of what sold me on this show was in the details and side-stories, and Jeff was one of the best of them.

*Unless I am completely forgetting about something. Especially in the first half, a lot of the jocks were indistinguishable to me.

-Here's my big thought: Do not make a second season. Don't do it. The ending is just about perfect. Yes, there's a lot of dangling threads in the narrative and Netflix hasn't been dismissive about doing another season. Look, I love closure. I love it so much. I hate when TV or filmmakers don't resolve things because they think it makes it more "artistic" or something equally stupid. But, I think 13 Reasons Why has plenty of closure. I don't need to see Bryce go to jail. I know the truth will come out and I know from his scene with Justin that his friends are abandoning him. Sheri confessed. Good. That's all I need to know. Hearing about her punishment doesn't matter. Clay's mom knows he has been listening to the tapes. That explains everything she needs to know. The biggest mysteries left involve Tyler's guns and Alex getting shot. Unrelated or related, I really don't need to know. Alex's story has to do with his feelings of guilt. That's been completed. The whole point of Tyler is that he's never included in anything, so isn't it fitting that the show doesn't care enough to end his story? The main reason I don't want a second season though is because it would take the story away from Hannah. To do that would mean missing the point of the series in the first place. Don't do it.

Movie Reaction: Life

Formula: Alien / Gravity

Some films are more concerned with effectiveness than novelty. It's very hard to be the first or the original. When that isn't an option, getting it right can be an equally noble goal. No one is pretending that Life doesn't look an awful lot like a bunch of other movies. The hope is that it is done so well, that no one cares.

Life begins when the 6 person crew of an international space station retrieve ground samples from a Mars probe. In that sample is a single cell that they manage to bring back to life. People all over the world rejoice and name this evidence of life on another planet Calvin, because, why not? Soon after reanimating Calvin, he starts growing and getting stronger. It's hardly a spoiler to tell you that, eventually, Calvin turns on the crew and leaves a lot of dead bodies.

It's a pretty small cast, since almost all of it takes place on the space station. I recognized Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, and Ryan Reynolds. I didn't recognize Hiroyuki Sanada, Olga Dihovichnaya, and Ariyon Bakare. No one stood out above the others though. Ryan Reynolds is about the only person I couldn't see being played by any other actor, which I don't mean as a slam on any of the cast. It's a movie about survival, not characters. Granted, better fleshed out characters would've certainly helped the film to stand out.

It really is hard for me to not talk about Life in terms of the films it reminds me of. It's a mission from Mars (The Martian), in which an alien attacks the crew (Alien). They are struggling to get back to Earth (Gravity), while also worrying about containing the creature (The Thing). As I alluded to earlier, all this pulling from other movies is fine. It just has to be done well. I can't say I bought into enough of the story. The lack of fail-safes in the space station seem poorly thought out. The crew had little regard for proper protocol (a common trope in this genre). Once it's revealed that Calvin can survive for an extended period of time outside the space station, he became a bogeyman who couldn't be stopped. In general, Life takes the easy way our a lot. It's easier to create conflict that the result of one unlucky break after another than it is to have people doing the right thing and still getting resistance. Life is a little too content going with what's easy for my taste. The characters weren't developed enough for me to invest in them, so that left a lot of focus on a story that showed its narrative hand too early and often. It's entertaining but not memorable.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Captain Fantastic

The Pitch: What if Lord of the Flies was on purpose?

When I heard that Matt Ross, Gavin Belson from Silicon Valley, wrote and directed a movie, my first guess wasn't that it was about a father raising his children in the wild and introducing them to the "real world" to go to the funeral of their mother who killed herself. Then again, that's not something you just assume. Now, Viggo Mortensen as the patriarch of this family: that something that's easier to guess. Mortensen very well could have an Oscar nomination for this film simply for how good a fit for the role he is. He's quite good too, make no mistake. In fact, this is rather spectacular casting all-around. The kids all get personalities and differences. The oldest son, Bo (George MacKay) especially stood out. The look he gives when he's nervous and shuts down is incredible. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. The extended family too. Kathryn Hahn has plenty of experience being mortified and frustrated interacting with the Pfeffermans. Frank Langella and Ann Dowd both want to work with Mortensen for whatever's best for the children. They just have a different idea about what that means.

The film celebrates this family's lifestyle while still judging it heavily. Ross does a terrific job showing the benefits (the kid are very strong and very book smart) and the weaknesses (they have no social skills outside of the family). Toward the end, the plot is a little forced. The daughter's injury is one of those "and then this needs to happen" moments that felt a little too convenient. There's a sense of humor to the film that I wasn't dialed into. Things like the different characters getting naked for no reason or the children getting weapons for Nohm Chompsky Day are silly but they felt more to me like underlining a point that had already been made. Unless those were supposed to be mortifying, sobering moments, in which case, I completely missed the point.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Passion

The Pitch: Rachel McAdams is a manipulative boss, but not in a funny way. More like a Single, White Female way.

I wouldn't say that I'm a Brian De Palma fan, but I sure have seen a lot of his movies, specifically 1993 on. Let's just say that his fastball isn't what it used to be. I watched Passion for many of the same reasons I watched Femme Fatale and was similarly unimpressed. I could not connect with the tone of the film. The score starts off distractingly whimsical and moves to the slow jazz of softcore porn before too long. It called attention to itself far too much.

I love Rachel McAdams, but she felt miscast. She can totally play a manipulative villain. She kind of launched her career doing that. She doesn't do two-faced though. She doesn't fake sweetness. You always knew where Regina George stood. Her niceness, was obviously fake. In Passion, Christine Stanford is meant to actually fool people and I didn't buy it.

Speaking of not buying things, Noomi Rapace's plan for getting away with Christine's murder is nonsense. It relied far too much on chance. Finding a non-bloody scarf as a sure-fire way to get out of prison is USA detective-series level weak/circumstantial. Look, it's not that hard. Just don't treat that like a master-plan. Admit that it was weak or that Rapace got lucky. Don't have the assistant retrace the steps at the end like it's some brilliant scheme she uncovered.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Kubo and the Two Strings

The Pitch: A boy with musical magical powers tries to protect himself from his wicked grandfather and aunts with the help a monkey and a beetle warrior - you know what. Just watch it.

I've learned two things from Kubo and the Two Strings (in conjunction with my fond memories of ParaNorman). 1) I need to see The Boxtrolls. 2) I need to give Coraline another shot. Because, I'm a fan of what Laika Studios does. Kubo and the Two Strings is a pretty movie. I agree with it being only the second animated film two be noted for its Visual Effect by the Oscars. This movie is fun. It's inventive. There's an edge to the story while still being accessible to people of all ages. After all, the kid is missing an eye. His parents are dead by the end of the film. Yet, it still manages to have a happy ending. No matter when you figure out that the monkey and the beetle are his parents, it's really entertaining to see how they play off one another. The twin sisters are quite creppy. Even though the story is straight up a video game adventure structure (collect all the items, defeat bosses), it totally works. I was thoroughly pleased with this start to finish.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Made

The Pitch: Swingers 2. This time, with mafia connections.

Swingers is a fun movie. I saw it several years ago and mainly remember it for the epic meltdown when Jon Favreau's Mike leaves all those messages on that poor woman's answering machine. Made is the spiritual sequel to Swingers and it feels like it. The stand out parts of Swingers (namely, Fareau and Vince Vaughn's dynamic) get brought along and the story is a little more ambitious. It's Jon Favreau's directorial debut. That sounds about right. The direction is pretty simple. I'd rather have a debut direction be simple and invisible rather than experimental and distracting. Favreau as a director is fun to track. The man is good at it, even if I can't put my finger on what he does. What do Made, Elf, Iron Man, Chef, and The Jungle Book have in common? A director who can disappear into his work, perhaps? Vince Vaughn is putting on the full Vince Vaughn in this. He is an actor I like best as a supporting character (even in Wedding Crashers, he was very prominent but second to Owen Wilson in the narrative). Made pushes about as hard as it can on the amount before Vaughn becomes irritating. If he didn't play off Favreau so well, it would be much less watchable.
While I think the ending was a bit clunky, the credits scene at Chuck-e-Cheese was wonderful.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: He Got Game

The Pitch: The incarcerated father of the #1 basketball recruit in the nation get a furlough in order to convince his son to go to college at the governor's alma mater. A Spike Lee film.

I saw this movie for one reason and one reason only: I wanted in on the Jesus Shuttlesworth jokes. I'm a big basketball fan, so I knew Ray Allen picked up that name from a Spike Lee movie he was in. I didn't really get the reference though. Now that he's functionally retired, I of course finally decided to get on the bandwagon. It also helps that I'd heard praise for Denzel Washington's performance, and I'm always looking to figure out what I think of Spike Lee as a director (I really should know by now but I don't). The most enjoyment I got out of the film was the cameos by actual basketball people, especially the coaches (they all look so young). All the basketball made this the most accessible Spike Lee I've found for me. Ray Allen is a better actor than I expected. Not great. Not all that good. But, much better than I'd expect for a professional athlete with no experience. I do wonder what the Kobe Bryant version (Lee's first choice for the role) would've looked like. It goes on a little long and I couldn't help but question the discrepancies of what I do know about college recruiting processes vs. what's portrayed in the film. The villainous characters are arch in that way that annoys me in Lee's films. Denzel really keeps it watchable though.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Suffragette

The Pitch: The story of the Suffragette movement in London.

I could say that I was motivated to see this movie because I was inspired by something like the Women's March* or some other response to a political issue of our time. However, that would be a lie. I saw this because I like Carey Mulligan, and it also promised me Helena Bohnam Carter and Meryl Streep. It could've been about anything and I'd've watched it. That said, it was nice to get a glimpse into the suffrage movement. It's baffling to me to think that women (or minorities) weren't allowed to vote, less than a century ago all over the world (and several places currently). People actually argued that women shouldn't vote because their fathers/husbands/sons already had their best interest in mind. Poppycocks!

*This is my obligatory reminder that I have these Delayed Reactions in the can for a while, so it's a least a month or two between when I see a movie and when I post about it. Sorry. Turning these things around day-off is way more stressful than I can deal with. Besides, these are delayed reactions, so I'm kind of making a point.

Carey Mulligan is as good as the character can be. I don't think the beats of her transformation are earned in the story. Mulligan makes them seem as authentic as she can. Helea Bohnam Carter has a nice and lived-in role. I remember being surprised when Meryl Streep failed to get an Oscar nomination for this movie last year, because it looked like low hanging fruit (Meryl + period piece + political issue = Oscar). Having seen how little she's in it, I get the "snub" now. I like that some of the men are given a measure of conflict about what's going on with the suffrage movement. Ben Whishaw is a jerk, but it's partly because he's unable to process the change he's seeing in his wife. It's not that he simply dumps her because she thinks women should be able to vote. Brendan Gleeson is the classic "I'm just doing my job" kind of villain.

The movie is more of a survey than a deep dive. Mulligan's character reminds me of Mark Wahlberg's in Patriot's Days. She's always in the right place at the right time. She's in the center of it all so that there's a POV character for the events. It all fells like a checklist though: the early protests, the secret rally with Emmeline Pankhurst, the hunger strike in jail, blowing up mailboxes. Given my lack of knowledge about the suffrage movement, every chapter of the film seemed like it was saying "That's a taste of what happened. Now, look it up on Wikipedia for the real story".

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Ghost in the Shell

Formula: (I, Robot / Her) * Lucy + Robocop

Some movies are a hard sell. On paper, everything looks right about it, but it still can't generate much excitement. That's how I feel about Ghost in the Shell. It has Scarlett Johansson, who is a legitimate movie star and can draw an audience. She proved with Lucy that she can carry an action movie without the rest of the Avengers crew. This film is adapted from a fairly popular Japanese property, which has a built-in fanbase. The style of the movie evokes the best of what the Wachowskis (The Matrix) and Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) among others have to offer. It even has a killer visual that can be used in all the trailers and TV spots: ScarJo revealing that full body suit, diving off the top of a building. Despite all this, it had a hard time convincing me that it was something to be excited about. "Hard sell" and "not excited about" are thoughts going into a movie though, not coming out of one. It wasn't until I got to seeing the movie, that I could determine there still wasn't much to be excited about.

I will give my standard warning now that I know nothing about the source material, so I don't particularly care what they "got wrong" or what "makes more sense if you know the manga". I'm looking at this movie. The movie is about Major Mira Killian (Johannson). She was a person, until every part of her body except for her brain was replaced with robotic parts. This makes her claim of being "human" questionable but makes her claim of being a super soldier unquestionable. She is the key piece to a special anti-terrorism task force. Someone is killing a group a researches who work for Hanka Robotics, the company who made Mira. While Mira and her team investigate and try to stop these killings, Mira learns there's something more nefarious going on with Hanka that she may be the center of.

Storywise, it's a familiar conspiracy story, with a helping of wrongly accused and on the run, and a dash of plucky misfits take on a large corporation. All things any movie fan knows well.

The movie leans heavily on the visuals as a selling point. Similar to the story though, at this point, it doesn't look very inventive. I assume it was at the time of the manga's release, but it seems like every 5 years for the last several decades, some director hires a few future theorists to come up with the same, sensory overload but grimy, "everything tied into a computer" view of the future (Blade Runner, Robocop, Total Recall, Minority Report, I, Robot, etc.). In a lot of ways, the movie reminds me of John Carter. John Carter of Mars was the original space opera, but by the time it finally became a film, the same thing had been done dozens of times before by works that it originally inspired. The Japanese style of Ghost in the Shell was a nice enough change. Not enough, but something, nonetheless.

Speaking of Japanese, let's talk about the whitewashing. I wasn't going to go into this too much, partly because I wasn't comparing this as an adaptation. I was even going to go as far as saying "as long as the movie is good, I don't really care about the casting". Then, in the movie, they point out that ScarJo was originally a Japanese girl before being put into her ScarJo body. That just seems strange to me. They literally point out that they made an Asian character white. Then they don't even explain why, in this Asian city, they would do that. Even a token attempt to explain that would put me at ease.

Regardless, ScarJo is good in this. I don't buy the internal conflict she's supposed to be going through. I think that is more on the script and direction than her though. She kicks ass well, which it what's most important. I don't recognize a lot of the cast, but they uniformly fill their roles as needed. Polou Asbaek gives me an "Action-star Eddie Izzard" vibe (Was that just me?). Michael Pitt's delivery in general reminds me of a glitchy robot (in a good way), so it's awful fitting that they cast him as a glitchy robot. It's always nice to see Juliette Binoche. Takeshi Kitano plays Aramaki. Either that actor is some Japanese screen icon or Aramaki is an incredibly beloved character (or both), because he gets the "legend treatment" in this. He's a bigger BAMF than ScarJo, it turns out, and gets to speak Japanese the whole time. I'm too lazy to look up which it is, but that's the kind of thing normally reserved for Harrison Ford showing up in Force Awakens or Tim Curry doing the narration in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Peter Ferdinando's Cutter is an aggressively forgettable antagonist.

Ghost in the Shell is a hard sell for what turn out to be justifiable reasons. The production design isn't as inspired as it once would've been. They appear to have overplayed their hand on the bankability of Scarlett Johansson: her name and a flesh-colored full body suit aren't enough to sell a movie without a clear hook*. The decision to make the movie PG-13 is becoming more of a liability as movies of its ilk are increasingly turning to R-rating. Personally, I was shocked to find out it was PG-13. It felt incongruent with the type of movie it was, like they were holding something back. Where last week, I was too close to appreciate Power Rangers, I feel like I was too distant and unfamiliar with Ghost in a Shell to appreciate it. It's fine, but mostly forgettable.

*Compared to the Lucy's advertising, I don't have a great idea of what to expect from this. By next year, I'm not sure I could pick this out of a lineup with Aeon Flux and Ultraviolet.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend 

Delayed Reaction: Florence Foster Jenkins

The Pitch: Meryl Streep sings very poorly and you'll still watch it because it's Meryl Streep.

It's starting to feel like there's nothing Meryl Streep can do that won't get nominated for an Oscar. Is that true though? She has 79 credits on IMDB after all, and "only" 20 Oscar nominations. Break that down though. 13 of her credits are for TV work. 5 are shorts. Another 9 are for animated project or voice/narrator credits. That means, really, we are talking about 52 roles. 20/52 = 38.5% of her filmwork gets an Oscar nomination. That's an incredible rate. For some context, Katherine Hepburn batted around 27.3% (12 nominations, 44 roles) and Jack Nicholson is at 20% (12 nominations, 60 roles). Except for some one-off nominations or special cases like James Dean* (2 nominations, 3 roles), no one is even close. So, yeah, she isn't nominated for everything, but excuse me for wondering how she was snubbed for her work in Stuck on You.

*Side tangent: That guys worked a lot. Between 1951-1956, he has 31 roles, mostly in TV.

It's no surprise that Florence Foster Jenkins is another one of those Oscar nominated roles. After Ricki and the Flash and Suffragette went unnoticed, the law of averages dictated that another one was coming. Also, it's actually pretty hard to sing that badly consistently when you actually can sing well (I'm told. I'm more of a counter-point for that). She's wonderfully oblivious. Hugh Grant is sweet. You believe he cares for Florence deeply, although there's always a question about how much of this is because she's wealthy. Simon Helberg is delightfully nervous. It's a silly character that only works because of his commitment to it. Those three actors/characters hold up an otherwise unimpressive movie. I'm not a big fan of farce unless it's done at a very high level, and this relied heavily on the farce of Florence being oblivious. I appreciated some of the smaller character moments, but the rest didn't do much for me.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend