Movie Reaction: American Animals

Formula: Ocean's Eleven * The Imposter

True crime stories are having quite a moment right now. You can trace it back to Serial back in 2014*. The fact that this barely advertised podcast could take over pop culture for several weeks woke a lot of execs up to heavy interest in true crime stories across platforms. Shortly after that, Making a Murderer became a sensation despite being buried as a Christmas-time release. Then The Jinx became a critical darling that winter. Netflix has made a cottage industry out of releasing true crime documentary series like Evil Genius, The Staircase, and The Keepers over the last couple years. Even parodying it in shows like American Vandal has spun gold. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to marry the format with a more traditional movie structure. And who better to do is than the director of one of the best true crime documentaries of the decade?

*I am well-aware that true crime stories have always been popular. They are a TV staple and documentaries like Paradise Lost have been around for years. Serial is when I'd argue that true crime became a force.

I felt a little dumb watching American Animals. The true story this is based on happened when I was a senior in high school in my otherwise boring home state, and I don't remember hearing about it at all. I'm not sure how that happened, because this story is nuts. American Animals tells to story of a few bored college students who plan and "execute" a heist of the Transylvania University rare book collection.

Writer/director Bart Layton takes an interesting approach to telling the story. He casts Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan and eventually Blake Jenner and Jared Abrahamson to play the guys responsible for the heist, but he also gets the actual guys for interviews. The actors mostly recreate the actual people's recollections of the events, sometimes with those people narrating. That adds so much to the movie. Without the interview segments, this is a pretty good heist movie on its own. The characters are all interesting. It's pretty funny. The heist scenes are well-executed. I would've happily watched that movie.

However, the interviews make it something special. First of all, the constant reminder that this really happened makes everything work better. It's hard to question a character's motivation if the actual person is on screen saying it. Secondly, having that connection layers things. I was practically jumping out of my seat during the heist scenes because I was so nervous. That wouldn't happen if the characters felt less real. Lastly, and probably most importantly is that the interviews openly challenge the story. I always say that I don't like documentaries that aren't willing to question their own story. It should hold up under scrutiny. Bart Layton's last movie was the documentary The Imposter, which I recommend to everyone (don't look up anything about it if you can). One of the things I love about that story is how much doubt there is in it. He openly questions everyone and it makes that movie stronger for it. The same thing happens in American Animals. We know certain events did occur. The rest is just whatever version makes you feel the best.

I really, really liked this movie. It combines a lot of things I love: heist movies, documentaries, true-crime stories, comedy. It does a solid job mixing the funny moments with the more dramatic aspects. Perhaps it runs a little long. I can also see people complaining about oversimplifying character motivations or letting them "off the hook" morally. That's about all I've got though. So far, this is the highlight of a pretty underwhelming summer, at least among the films with budgets less than $100 million.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Formula: Sicario - Training Day

My two favorite things about 2015's Sicario were Emily Blunt's stabilizing lead performance and Denis Villeneuve's expert direction. Without those things, Sicario looked like virtually every other movie or show about the U.S.-Mexican border. It feels like there's some movie or show about the topic every year or two. Benicio del Toro won an Oscar in 2000 in Traffic. The FX show The Bridge covered this exact topic. Documentaries like Cartel Land look into the topic in depth. Even shows like Weeds took a lighter look at it. Even if all the same pieces returned, I didn't see a need for a sequel to Sicario. Making a sequel and taking away Blunt and Villenueve sounded just plain dumb.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado is more inconsequential than it is bad. And that's selling it way short. The idea for Sicario as a series appears to be more about universe-building than continuing a single story. Sicario was about Blunt's character getting introduced to the border war. Soldado tells a more specific story. The movie begins with a terrorist attack on U.S. After the department of defense discovers that some of the terrorists used the drug cartels for safe passage into the country, the Secretary of Defense (Matthew Modine) sets up a CIA task force led by Special Agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) to provoke a war between competing Mexican cartels, hoping they'll wipe each other out so the U.S. doesn't have to. Graver is told that there are no rules and he can play as dirty as he wants. He puts together a team including notorious mercenary Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro). Their plan is to kidnap the daughter of a drug kingpin and make it look like she was taken by a rival cartel. After a lot of cloak and dagger operations, this eventually leads to Gillick and the girl in the middle of Mexico with a lot of people looking to kill them.

Pretty immediately, replacement director Stefano Sollima eases any concerns that the loss of Villeneuve will be a problem. He has a great eye for this world and handles the tension of it equally as well. Some credit, no doubt, goes to his DP Dariusz Wolski too. It helps that Taylor Sheridan returned to pen this screen as well. The stakes feel bigger this time. The set pieces certainly are. I only remember one or two big action scenes in the first film. Soldado doubles that and goes bigger. That would bother me if the movie was going for more realism. As is, it keeps things interesting.

It's hard not to get sucked in by what Del Toro and Brolin are doing in this. After very mannered performances in Marvel and Star Wars movies, Del Toro moves back into serious mode and it's refreshing. He has terrific word economy throughout this. He won't use 10 words when one or a grunt will do. He's less of a bogeyman this time around. Brolin has an intense ease to him. He walks around with the confidence of a man who knows that he's the best at what he does but doesn't need other people to know it. I'd like to get a beer with him, but I would be afraid to have a disagreement with him. The cartel kingpin's daughter is played by Isabela Moner. I certainly like her more in this than I did in the last Transformers movie. I appreciate how she starts as a tough girl early on, and we get to see how that falls apart when she's actually put in danger. Other actors get to do some nice work in smaller roles. Catherine Keener is essentially Brolin's bureaucratic PR counterpart. Jeffrey Donovan stops just short of trying to be a scene-stealer as one of the other agents in Brolin's crew. Personally, I imagined he was Michael Westen under a deep cover. Elijah Robinson gets an initially unrelated storyline that runs parallel to the main story as a young man who gets involved in the cartel's human smuggling operation across the border.

My main issue with the movie was that the story gets a little too convenient a little too often, especially with Del Toro. He becomes more of a superhuman than someone who bleeds, which is less interesting than someone who actually feels like he could be in danger. There's a moment that requires him to know another language completely by chance that's reverse-engineered to give his back story some depth. A couple lucky or unluck beats dictate a lot of how the story plays out. Any one of these things are forgivable, but combined, it's a bit much (See: One big leap).

For the most part, I quite enjoyed Soldado*. I doubt another movie this year will mix tension and action as well as this. The world it explores is deep and rich. I really feel like I could happily watch a dozen loosely connected movies in this world (It helps that it's basically a sensationalized version of the real world). Sicario isn't a franchise I ever thought I needed, but it's one that I'm happy to have around.

*The title was supposed to be Soldado, but "Sicario: Day of the" was added to let audiences know it's a sequel. I understand the change, but Soldado really is a better title.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Dark Water

The Pitch: What's the closest to The Ring we can get without being called a rip-off?

A mother and daughter move into a new apartment with a mysterious leak in the ceiling that keeps getting worse.

Let's get this out of the way. Dark Water isn't great. It's fine. That's as high as I can go with praise. The story kind of feels like it was generated by a computer after plugging in the words "water", "apartment", "divorce", and "supernatural". It's roughly assembled with too many moments that are more designed for scares than to make sense.

All that said, I had enough fun watching it. I'm happy to watch Jennifer Connelly in anything. John C. Reilly is an offbeat pick for his role, but it works. The whole movie is shot so that everything feels damp at all times. That made it uncomfortable - in a good way. I'm not sure what to make of Tim Roth's lawyer character. Did I miss the explanation about why he's lying about his personal life and having a family? I think that was a benign misdirect. It made his character more interesting though.

For a fairly lazy play off of The Ring, Dark Water could be a lot worse. It's more psychological thriller than horror and follows more of a formula than I care for. It's watchable, and sometimes, that's enough.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Stagecoach

The Pitch: So there's this John Wayne guy. I think he could be a star.

A group of strangers in 1880 take a stage coach from Tonto, AZ to Lordsburg, NM, pursued by Native Americans.

This seals it. I just plain like Westerns. I've been on a crash course over the last year or two. I've gone through classics like Shane, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, and High Noon. I've enjoyed more modern Westerns like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and True Grit. Then there's shows like Deadwood and Godless that sucked me in. I get it. There's an allure to west, before America was really settled, when people were still making up the rules. I do enjoy the more modern takes that point out the racist undertones of the classic stories and show that the west could be pretty miserable. I also see the appeal of the classic western.

I really enjoyed Stagecoach. It's a simple "Point A to point B with complication C" story. It's filled with archetypal characters who all play their roles well. John Wayne is a god-damn star. Perhaps the biggest delight of catching all these Westerns has been understanding why John Wayne became a legend. The man has screen presence. From his very first shot you know that this movie belongs to him. It was striking to see him so young. My experience with him is all 10-20 years later. 

The Apache attack is impressively staged. Some of those horse stunts are downright suicidal. The fun thing with older movies is that you know that when something looks real, it's because it was real. No CGI here. They use every inch of that stagecoach too. People are firing from every side of it. I wasn't expecting to have a sequence that thrilling in a movie that old. More sophisticated technology has built up a tolerance in me.

There are a few things that haven't aged well. As much as I liked the Apache attack, parts of it do look distractingly phony. I always have some trouble with the simplistic depiction of Native Americans. This greatly exceeded my expectations though.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend