Delayed Reaction: Audrie & Daisy

The Pitch: The story of two victims of sexual assaults and how differently their stories end.

I found out about this documentary from a Drew McWeeny post. I didn't know much about it and I wasn't quite prepared. This is a tough film. It's essentially about the experiences of victims of sexual assault and how if affects their lives afterward in just about every way. I had plans to watch another movie that was kind of dark after this and, instead, I ended up switching to my Coupling DVDs to cheer me up.

There isn't anything adventurous about the film. It tells two stories (mainly) and uses another victim of assault to link them. It dives deep into the "Scarlet lettering" and victim-blaming that occurs. The things that happened to these girls are objectively bad and it's telling their stories. There's no interest in trying to explain any other "sides" or figuring out why people react the way they do. That's a story for another project. I hope I never get "used" to hearing stories like this, although I'm certain I've seen an SVU for every angle of these stories.

This is a great film for presenting a perspective; one that is commonly ignored or mishandled in film and TV. I can't say I'm glad I saw this, because that's clearly the wrong word, but it is worth seeing.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Jackie

Formula: 1 / JFK

Legacy is a funny thing. It's not about what you've done. It's about how you'll be remembered, which is often very different. You don't have as much control over your own legacy as you think. It's defined by other people. Sometimes, you are lucky enough to have someone who makes it their job to shape and protect your legacy once you are gone. For John F. Kennedy, that person was Jackie.

Jackie is not your standard biopic. It isn't concerned with covering Jackie Kennedy's whole life. In fact, other than a few scenes during JFK's presidency, it all takes place during the week or two that follow his assassination. The spine of the film is Jackie giving an extensive interview - mostly off the record, she points out often - at her temporary home in Massachusetts, and she jumps around telling the events that followed her husband's death. It certainly covers the "greatest hits" - the assassination, LBJ's inauguration on Air Force One, Kennedy's funeral procession - but it is far more about the moments in between, when Jackie is figuring out how to define her husband's legacy.

It is a marvelous character study. Natalie Portman dominates the film, to the point that it's alarming when there's a scene that she isn't in. In my opinion, it's the best work Portman has ever done. She disappears into the role and it's mesmerizing. This Jackie is always thinking, always processing. She plays the small moments with the same intensity as the big ones. The fact that Portman isn't the per-ordained Oscar winner this year is a testament to how strong the 2016 Lead Actress race is. Billy Crudup as the unnamed journalist interviewing her is wonderful as he just tries to keep up with Jackie. John Hurt has a small, key role as a priest she speaks with. It's the moments with those two characters that we get the most insight into how her mind works. Peter Sarsgaard plays a Bobby Kennedy who has to be both a grieving brother and a present politician. Greta Gerwig has the definition of a supporting role as Jackie's lifelong friend and dutiful social secretary. All of them are very good, but Natalie Portman is running laps around them.

I want to single out Mica Levi's score. I don't know much about music, so my vocabulary is rather limited on the topic. I just know that the music is a key part of the film. It uses a lot of string instruments and is often unsettling. It's an abrasive score but it fits. I never thought I'd find the song "Camelot" to be so haunting.

I really, really liked Jackie. It's more focused than a normal biopic and more substantive than other films that focus so much on a single character (Still Alice comes to mind). It's more than just how effectively Natalie Portman can channel Jackie Kennedy. It's about coping with tragedy and shaping events to mean something greater. Nothing feels big in moment, when you're in the middle of it. It's what you leave behind that becomes significant.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Passengers

Formula: Z for Zachariah + Moon

There isn't a place for Passengers in the current Hollywood model. It's a $110 million character study. That's not a thing. Not these days, at least. A studio doesn't want to devote that much money to something that doesn't look like a blockbuster. It took getting two of the biggest stars in the world and an Oscar nominated director to get this made, and I'd still wager there was a lot of studio influence involved.

Passengers is about a spaceship making a 120 year journey to a new planet. It has 5000 people on board. That is, until one of the hibernation pods breaks and one of the people, Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), wakes up 90 years too soon with no way to go back to sleep. For a while, he recreates the pilot of The Last Man on Earth [in space!] until a fellow passenger, Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), wakes up too. They try to make the best of that hopeless situation as the two prettiest people in space. Meanwhile, the ship is slowly breaking down and they have to fix it or else everyone dies.

The movie is divided neatly into about four parts: Jim alone, Jim and Aurora together, Jim and Aurora apart, and an action movie. Part one is fine. It's needed to establish things. Pratt can handle doing a scene by himself or talking to his robot bartender (Michael Sheen). The middle parts with Aurora are where the movie thrives. There are some fantastic moral debates. Pratt and Lawrence play off each other nicely. I'd watch a RomCom with them any day. It's the final part that bothered me. It bails Chris Pratt's character (who has done so bad things) out entirely, which undercuts everything about the movie before that. Really, everything in the last 20 minutes is afraid to make a bold decision. I can't prove that the ending was influenced by a studio executive, but what happens at the end of the film is exactly what I imagine when I hear the term "studio interference". And the thing is, I'd happily watch the movie that it becomes in the end. It just doesn't fit with the first 3/4s of the movie.

This is a film that couldn't work without charismatic leads, since so much of the film is one, two, or at the very most three actors in a scene. Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence are smart casting decisions. Pratt especially breaths life into scenes that should be quite dull (reminiscent of Sam Rockwell in Moon). Lawrence has a more difficult role. She has to go through the same emotions that the audience already saw Pratt go through and then some. She handles it well though.

The film looks great. They could've easily scrimped on the sets, given the claustrophobic setting, but the spaceship feels sufficiently large (to a point) and believably futuristic. I question the business model of the Homestead Corp. (who owns the ship) and Aurora's motivation for making the trip. Those are things you just have to accept though. The movie isn't about that.

The individual pieces of Passengers are good. They don't all fit together well. It doesn't know if it wants to be a "serious movie" or a blockbuster. It's entertaining throughout. I wasn't bored by it. Many parts are quite clever. I love the questions it asks and don't like the answers it provides. It's an uneven movie that I could easily enjoy despite that.


Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend 

After the Credits

(Some thoughts for if you've seen the movie)

OK, let's talk about Jim for a moment and how the movie goes too far to let him off the hook. He did a bad thing by waking Aurora. For a while, it makes him sit with that, both before and after she finds out. The "drowning man" analogy that Lawrence Fishburne's character gives is a perfect counter to it. I was very curious to see how the film would resolve this.
It turns out, the solution was to go overboard to excuse it. Let's take a tour through the beats:

1) Without Jim and someone to help (cough - Aurora - cough), the ship would've failed and everyone would've died anyway.
2) By holding the exhaust door open, Jim gets a heroic, redemptive act, but one that someone doesn't kill him.
3) It requires Aurora to have to save him after his tether breaks. By the way, if I learned anything from The Martian, it's that what she does is nearly impossible. That scene may have spent all of my "One big leap" allowance.
4) She also has to bring Jim back from the dead in the infirmary. At that point, it would've been subtler if they just flashed "SHE REALLY DOES CARE FOR HIM" in big bold letters on the screen.
5) There's a way for her to go back into hibernation is she wants. That makes it Aurora's choice to stay with Jim, absolving him of all wrong doing.

I'm not saying the movie had to have a sad or bittersweet ending, but the majority of the movie certainly wasn't building toward a wholly happy ending.

Delayed Reaction: Jane Got a Gun

The Pitch: The Magnificent Seven  - 6

Occasionally, it's fun to watch a movie that I know was in production hell for a while. I recently watched Get A Job which was in release hell. Jane Got a Gun had a lot more variety. Director changes, rewrites, recasting (both finding new actors for roles and changes the roles that actors were originally cast in), studio bankruptcy, and delayed release. The only consistent thing I could find was Natalie Portman, who I believe was a fairly active producer as well as the star. I'll be honest. The movie does plays like it had trouble coming together. It had the same "let's just make this and be done with it" attitude that The Good Dinosaur had. The film began as a Black List movie in 2011 and (like many blacklist final products) it's hard to see why. It's fine. It's basically a "defend your land" movie with a touch of "lovers separated by circumstance". Jane (Portman) has to defend her house from a criminal boss (Ewan McGreggor) and his gang who are after her husband (Noah Emmerich), so she calls in help from her neighbor and former love (Joel Edgarton). Nothing's all that memorable. I think there's a version of this film in which Ewan McGreggor could've taken over as the central protagonist, a la Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds (or maybe Val Kilmer in Tombstone is the better comparison, despite not being a villain in that). Portman and Edgarton are fine and that's it. I won't pretend the Star Wars reunion (Portman and McGreggor, obviously, but don't forget that Edgarton played Owen Lars in Eps II and III) didn't entice me somewhat. It doesn't really play into the film though (It's not like Portman and McGreggor did much together in those movies anyway). I keep hoping that director Gavin O'Connor will wow me again the way he did with Warrior, which I adore. It's ably shot. Nothing more.

I have to quit being so negative. The bare bones of the movie is fine. It mixes flashbacks with the present effectively. The relationships between the characters are explained well. The showdown at the end is satisfying in all the ways you want and ends nicely.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Get a Job

The Pitch: It's sure hard to get a job...not really. It's hard to get a job you succeed at...not really. It's hard to get a job you are passionate about...that sounds about right.

There is exactly one reason why I saw this movie: Marc Maron mentioned it enough. That's a first, I think. You see, this film has been on the shelf for a while. I was filmed in 2012 and came out [barely] in 2016. In that time, I think Marc Maron has had half the cast on his WTF podcast and he inevitably mentions this movie that they worked on together even though they weren't in any of the same scenes. Kind of like how The Lone Ranger's aggressive marketing beat me down, that echoed talking point got me to see Get a Job.

Miles Teller, Anna Kendrick, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Alison Brie, Bryan Cranston, John C. McGinley, John Cho, and Jorge Garcia is the cast of a movie that I'm going to see: on opening weeking, under normal circumstances. This final product is pretty dismal though. None of the characters are interesting enough and it couldn't settle on a tone. It wavered between gross-out comedy, buddy comedy, and serious commentary on  employment opportunities in uncomfortable ways. Teller's character just feels entitled. Maybe I'm getting older, but the "guy who doesn't want to work for a stuffy corporation" is a trope I have no interest in. I think there could be a whole movie about Cranston, as Teller's recently unemployed father. Like Teller's roommates, his father just felt like a distraction, given the amount of time the story received. Kendrick started off somewhat interesting, but got too silly after she was laid off. Alison Brie was wasted (a phrase I'm getting far too used to saying). Occasionally, I'll reference "Whoever's available" movies. These's are movies that don't have a specific reason for existing and the casting appears to be whoever had a hole in their schedule at that time. Everyone is in the movie just to have something to do. It's the equivalent of eating something for lunch simply because it's noon. A Good Old Fashioned Orgy is a good example of that. Rapture-Palooza is too. Get a Job fits that description as well.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Formula: Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope + Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Sequels are hard. Most films are intended as a complete story, so finding a way to continue the narrative can feel forced. Prequels are even harder because the stakes have a ceiling. In essence, the film must take the audience from A to C in the narrative when the audience already knows what C is. You know, Bilbo is never in danger in The Hobbit because you know he makes it to Lord of the Rings. That puts a lot of pressure on B (going from A to C) to be entertaining, so that the movie becomes about the journey, not the destination. Direct prequels are the hardest kind of prequel. An origin story can take place so far before the original movie that the world is unrecognizable, but an immediate prequel is literally working around a story that has already been told and has no wiggle room. That's what makes Rogue One so impressive. It's a direct prequel and barely feels limited by it.

No series knows the dangers of prequels better than Star Wars, so it was almost surprising to hear that they were doing another one and upping the degree of difficulty. You see, Rogue One is the story of the Rebels who secure the plans to the Death Star. It's a single line from A New Hope that is expanded into an entire movie. To make that work, the movie needs to be about more than the Death Star plans. And it is.

Rogue One follows Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the daughter of the lead engineer of the Death Star (Mads Mikkelsen). Her father was taken from her as a child by the Empire. She's survived since then as a criminal but is pulled into the Rebellion, at first, against her will. Circumstances have made her the only person with the needed connections to get the information about the Empire's new planet destroyer, so she has no choice but to help. In a lot of ways, it's a very traditional story. Jyn's initially resistant to helping the Rebellion but comes around by the end. She picks up a motley crew of characters to help her along the way: a Rebel Captain (Diego Luna), a reprogrammed Imperial droid with an attitude (Alan Tudyk), a former Imperial cargo pilot (Riz Ahmed), a blind zealot of the Force -who isn't a jedi- (Donnie Yen), and his longtime friend/protector (Wen Jiang). The climax involves Jyn climbing to the top of some tower to do something that everything depends on*. It's a familiar formula.

*Seriously, the number of big movies that rely on that setup is staggering. It's one of those things I can't un-notice once it was pointed out to me.

The movie works around the limitations set by A New Hope very well. It takes a convenient conceit from the original film (Why does the Death Star have this massive weakness?) and works it into the story. The fact that the heroes of Rogue One aren't featured in A New Hope gives this a different kind of ending than other Saga Star Wars films (i.e. the ones with "Episode" in the title). In essence, it uses the limits set by A New Hope as the spine of the narrative and relishes in the challenge of filling the holes in the story. It's a pretty impressive example of reverse-engineering (which is normally something I hate).

The cast is delightful. I'm a big fan of Felicity Jones in general, so it's fun to see her in this world. Jyn Erso is tough, but not in the way that a lot of films would make her, in which "tough female" ends up meaning "superhuman badass". Diego Luna is a good counter to her. They are both rule breakers, but one works in the system and the other works outside of it. K-2SO, the droid voiced by Alan Tudyk, throws so much shade. It's like if C-3PO learned sarcasm. I loved it. Really, all the characters, even Ben Mendelsohn as the director behind the construction of the Death Star and Forest Whitaker as the fanatical Rebel who raise Jyn after her father was taken, are types. It's a big cast in a self-contained story. That's a hard thing to get around. There isn't the time to fully flesh everyone out. The characters all fit into this universe though and have enough individual flavor to stand out, which is all I needed from them.

Rogue One isn't the Star Wars movie that's going to suddenly make you a fan of the franchise. That shouldn't count against it. On a technical level, it's every bit as good as The Force Awakens. The climactic battle is up there with Geonosis and the assaults on the Death Star from the original trilogy. The stakes feel high despite already knowing the outcome. There are enough call-backs to other movies to entertain attentive fans while not so many that it gets annoying. On a gut level, it does feel lesser to the Saga stories just because it is a side-story. If it isn't about the Skywalkers, it's not tapping into the same nostalgia for me. Sorry. However, for what it is, it is very good and I look forward to these individual adventures going forward nearly as much as the Saga stories, which is a helluva lot.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Nocturnal Animals

Formula: Hell of High Water / Nightcrawler

Nocturnal Animals is fashion designer Tom Ford's follow up to A Single Man, which frankly, was much better than anyone had reason to suspect for a debut feature from a fashion designer with no previous ties to the film world. Nocturnal Animals is a more ambitious project, with a larger cast and more moving parts. He's assembled a top notch cast and the film, to no one's surprise, looks great. Sadly, he tries to do a little too much and handicaps the actors with some ham-fisted dialogue throughout.

The film tells the story of Susan (Amy Adams), a wealthy socialite in Los Angeles. She's feeling unsatisfied with her life. Her husband (Armie Hammer) is barely trying to hide that he's sleeping around. They are running out of money and everyone in the community knows it. Then, out of the blue, she is sent a manuscript for a novel written by her ex-husband, Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal), who dedicates the story to her. The story, which is depicted in the film as Susan reads it, is a fictionalized account of a man (also played by Gyllenhaal) who is terrorized by some men in West Texas and looks to get revenge. It's a grisly tale. Susan doesn't know what to make of it being dedicated to her. She starts thinking back to the days when she and Tony were together and everything that has led her to where she is now.

The movie is full of a lot of great topics worth exploring. Ford clearly has a lot on his mind about the choices we make and where they lead. The film definitely got me thinking more than most do. The delivery is off though. It's like every conversation Amy Adams has is spoken in generalities or trying to make universal points. No one talks like people. For example, in a flashback, Susan talking to Tony about her family sounds like a description she read in a book somewhere, like she didn't actually know them. It's very nearly "show, don't tell" territory. I think there's some purpose to that. The scenes from Tony's story are much looser than the scenes with Susan in the "real world". That seems like a purposeful contrast, but the flashbacks in the real world are equally lifeless even though they are meant to reflect a freer time for Susan. So, I'm either missing something or this goes beyond a directorial choice.

This would be a good time to point out that there is a difference between character nuance and performance nuance. Amy Adams is doing good work throughout the film. Even the best actress can't make bad dialogue good though. The most she can do is find a way to make it work, which is what she does. On the page, her character isn't nearly as interesting as she makes her. Everyone else in the real world is too one-note to matter. Actors like Armie Hammer, Michael Sheen, and Laura Linney only get a scene or two to make an impression. The fictional world is carried by the trio of Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, and Aaron-Taylor Johnson. Gyllenhaal is mostly reactive to the other two and does well with it. Shannon has fun hamming it up as a detective working with Gyllenhaal, almost like he's doing an impression of a Jeff Bridges character from True Grit or Hell or High Water. Taylor-Johnson lives it up as a scumbag and has a wonderful scene on a toilet (and that's all I'll say).

Thankfully, the film looks every bit as pretty as you'd expect from Tom Ford. Between the beautiful photography and Adams' non-spoken performance, I started to wonder if he could've just dropped all the dialogue from the real-world scenes altogether. I wouldn't've minded that. The opening credits are mesmerizing. I wanted to look away but couldn't.

I was looking forward to this movie a lot. Ford impressed me with A Single Man. The premise of Nocturnal Animals is intriguing. Films that are about telling a story are like catnip for me (Stranger Than Fiction, The Princess Bridge, even Alex and Emma). Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal are two of my favorite working actors too. I'm still holding out hope that maybe the movie is just smarter than me and I'll figure it out in time. For now, I'll settle on this being a pretty disappointment with actors I like doing the best they could.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend 

Delayed Reaction: How to Be Single

The Pitch: Four women navigate dating in New York City.

It was never a question of if I would see this movie, only when. Deadpool bumped it out when it was still in theaters, so I settled for HBO. I've liked Dakota Johnson since Ben & Kate, the quickly cancelled but immediately charming FOX series from a couple years ago. Rebel Wilson, when not the center of attention, is a lot of fun on screen (See Pitch Perfect and the sequel). Alison Brie should be headlining movies by now (movies that do better than the very enjoyable Sleeping with Other People, that is). Leslie Mann I've liked for years, but after This is 40 and some inspired work in The Other Woman, I'm excited to see her in any comedy. Even the men of the movie (Damon Wayans Jr, Anders Holm, Jake Lacy, Jason Mantzoukas, Colin Jost) have made the rounds on just about every comedy series over the last 5 years. The story of the movie doesn't even matter as long as I can see those actors play off each other.

The script is credited to the writers of films like He's Just Not That Into You and Valentine's Day* which makes perfect sense. This is, after all, essentially a dating anthology. Everyone fits some broad archetypes and that works. Mann and Lacy are sweet together. Brie and Holm have a nice, non-storybook ending. Nothing was funny or poignant enough to really stick with me, but most things aren't. It's like a Leslye Headland movie with a duller edge.

*And also to a writer for Ben & Kate, which either explains or is the result of Dakota Johnson's presence.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Everybody Wants Some!!

The Pitch: Boyhood was really hard. Might as well go back to something more familiar.

Is there anyone who meanders better than Richard Linklater? The Coen brother are great at building a story that ends up having no significance (Burn After Reading, The Big Lebowski, Hail, Caesar!). Cameron Crowe certainly understands how to have a relaxed pace (Almost Famous, Elizabethtown). I can't think of anyone better than Linklater at building a movie out of the events that would be skipped over in another movie though. Boyhood is essentially an anthology designed as a character study. There's not really a "plot" per se. The Before series is just a collection of conversations. Even his more traditional films (School of Rock, Bad News Bears, Bernie) aren't as concerned with the plot as you'd expect. Of course, Dazed and Confused is the obvious movie to bring up when discussing Everybody Wants Some!! It's tough to find two more similar movies in terms of pace , setting, and structure.

Everybody Wants Some!! is a damn enjoyable movie. Why it's an enjoyable movie is a little harder to answer. After all, it's as plot-light as possible. It follows a college baseball team in 1980 over the three days leading up to the beginning of the fall semester. It fits the "slice of life" category of movies where there's no central climax or story, but there are several small stories that resolve themselves in their own way all with the same characters. Those are tricky. There's less of a "safety net" for them. In a traditional film, the two big things I'm going to notice are story and character. If one struggles, the other can make up for it or distract from it. A movie like this relies entirely on the characters. If you don't want to be around these characters, this movie becomes a slog.

Linklater is great at building characters, thankfully. I don't think any character is wholly likable, except maybe Blake Jenner in the lead role: the straight-man POV character. Glenn Powell and Juston Street* are the breakout characters for me, but the bench of memorable characters is so deep that I imagine I'd get a different combination from anyone I ask who as seen it. This is my second Zoey Deutch movie in not that long. It looks like she set to start popping up everywhere pretty soon.

*It took three tries for me to not instinctively type "Jason Street".

Pretty much all the small adventures - the parties, baseball practice, ping-pong - worked for me. None overstayed their welcome. It touches on some greater concerns of the characters (I like how the talk of going pro looms over all of them) without weighing down the overall tone. Sure, the relationship dynamics fit a several-week span more than just three days, but I didn't care much about that in the moment.

Oh, and thank god that I'm lazy or else I would've never known about the retro video at the end of the credits with all the actors rapping in character. That was delightful and perfectly fit the rest of the movie.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Mascots

The Pitch: Best in Show for the mascot world.

The only note I made while watching this was "An empty calories version of Christopher Guest". That's all that needs to be said. The humor is very familiar. A lot of guided improvisation with a bunch of actors who do it well. Guest has no trouble putting together a strong cast of his regulars, like Jane Lynch, Parker Posey, Fred Willard, Ed Begley Jr., Jennifer Coolidge, etc. and adding capable newcomers like Zach Woods, Chris O'Dowd*, and Sarah Baker. There's a couple good laughs, but this is mostly going through the motions.

*Oh yeah, O'Dowd was on Guest's HBO show Family Tree, so even he's not new to that repritory cast.

I'll admit, I think I have a bias against these Netflix released movies. There's a reason why their best film so far (Beast of No Nation) was from a director that no one outside of True Detective fans had heard of. It's not like Martin Scorsese is bringing his next opus to Netflix. The established filmmakers who are willing to have their work distributed by Netflix (Adam Sandler, Ricky Gervais, Christopher Guest) are not bringing their A-game when they are still getting paid upfront for a B-. If that's not actually how it's working with Netflix, Mascots isn't convincing me of that.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend