Dr. Strange (4/5 Stars)

I read somewhere that Marvel had just made the 13^th successful blockbuster in a row. It speaks to the strength of the brand. True, it has a tremendous advantage in having a backlog of sixty years of story and the built-in audience to boot over other great brands such as Pixar, but that shouldn’t take away from the great franchise craft that can be found in these movies. “Dr. Strange” is one of my favorites already. It was so good that I saw it twice in a theater and took my family to see it over Thanksgiving.

Blockbusters are mainly to be seen for Spectacle. Spectacle should be big but also unique as should convey a sense of awe on the viewer. Given the consistent multitude of Spectacles that all look alike it is hard for any single one to have a great deal of their impact. A city being blown up hardly excites me anymore. I’ve already seen it many times.“Dr. Stange” to its great credit, showed me Spectacle I had never seen before. It was awesome.

To explain how, here is a character from the movie: “The Avengers protect the world from more physical dangers. We protect the world from supernatural forces from other worldly dimensions.” Like many comic books, “Dr. Strange” melds modern science with ancient bullshit. Dr. Strange practices magic but this magic comes in the form of 21^st century mathematical babbel about relativity, the multiverse, and particle physics. The audience hardly understands either so I guess it makes sense to put them together. Anyway during certain fight scenes, the magic works less on the participants of the fight than on their surroundings. Spells are casts and buildings fold up and down, the axis of the world tilts, gravity goes every which way, and then everything splits up in a crazy fantastical kaleidoscopic effect. You really have to see it to believe it. I was blown away a couple of times by what was going on.

What makes it great of course is not necessarily that things are crazy, but that these things are explained, have rules, and follow them. The biggest laugh in the movie contains a fight between two ghosts of two physically comatose people in a hospital emergency room. How the movie gets there is just superb story-telling. It is a very nice ‘aha!’ moment.

Dr. Stephen Strange of course believes none of this in the beginning. He is a famous and successful brain surgeon dedicated to science. Like many Marvel Superheroes, his main flaw is arrogance (an all too common flaw for superheroes I still believe) and after an accident that ruins his hands, he humbles himself and seeks help from The Ancient One who lives in a monastery in Tibet. The background of these training scenes are perhaps more interesting than what takes place during them as it illustrates the benefits and limitations of corporate marketing.

This Tibetan monastary is an exceptionally diverse Tibetan monastary. The three main wizards are a Black Man named Mordo (Chiwetal Ejiofor), a Chinese man (Benedict Wong), and a Woman (Tilda Swinton). There are a multitude of others in the background. I spotted a Japanase guy somewhere at some point. White men are represented by our main protagonist, Dr. Steven Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch playing another snarky genius) and our main antagonist, Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelson). Everybody seems to be here except, well, Tibetans. Now the Tilda Swinton character, The Ancient One, used to be Tibetan in the comic book. But she was changed to a Celtic sorceress in the movie. Why? Well, one of the main markets for Marvel movies is China and the Chinese don’t like it when you say good things about Tibetan monks. Also notice that the three main sanctuaries for the wizards are located in New York, London, and Hong Kong. Now why would these three locations be all that special in terms of magic. The answer is they aren’t. What these three places happen to have in common is that they are major financial hubs, the three biggest in the world actually.

You can take a look at this and see crass manipulation of character and location for marketing reasons and corporate gain as well as craven capitulation in the face of a corrupt Chinese government. But you can look at the glass half-full as well. For instance, when corporations try to make as money as possible, they follow a strategy of inclusion. So these stories contain as many different and diverse people as possible. And really its the Chinese government, not Marvel, that are jerks at the end of the day. If Marvel wasn’t being pressured (i.e. the market was more free in China) The Ancient one would have remained Tibetan and we would have all enjoyed a movie that would have been even more cosmopolitan.

p.s. Conveniently, I can date back the start of the Marvel Universe (I put that at 2008’s Iron Man) with my arrival in New York. Yes, every time the Avengers and their enemies destroyed New York City, I was living there.

Moonlight (4/5 Stars)

 “Moonlight” is the type of movie that provokes an IMDB search after watching it. I was vaguely familiar with some of the actors. Mahershala Ali I know from ‘House of Cards’ and Andre Holland I know from ‘The Knick.’ Naomie Harris is the latest Moneypenny in the James Bond Franchise. But I hadn’t heard of Barry Jenkins who wrote and directed this movie. Turns out the last time he made a movie was six years ago. And that’s too bad, because from watching this movie it is plain that he is a storyteller who excels at not only writing words and coaching actors but also for visual framing and sound design. In other words, he is a complete writer/director. Such a person should be making a new movie every one or two years, not six. We are missing out by not keeping him continuously employed.

“Moonlight” is one of the small intimate pictures that is done to perfection. The story is split into three chapters all named after the various incarnations of the main character. The first story is called ‘Little’ and takes place when the boy is a child. The second is called ‘Chiron’ and takes place in high school. The third is called ‘Black’ and takes place in adulthood. The elements of the story are not particularly new: A bad childhood and awkward adolescence with bullies. Two other elements, themselves not particularly new, become novel when put together: 1) an African American boy with an absentee father and a drug-addicted mother and 2) the boy happens to be a homosexual in a community that has way too many other problems to be progressive in that respect. But the movies strength comes not from the fact it checks off these boxes in the world of identity politics (it could have and a lesser and lazier movie would have been all about it), it is a great movie because this is a story about the identity of this one particular person, and the movie in no way excludes portions of the audience from empathizing with this one particular person’s search for identity. He ultimately defines himself from the inside-out, as opposed to say from the outside-in in contrast with some exterior societal force.

A movie that focuses so much on the interior development of a character will focus as much on the good times as well as the bad, and though this character has dark forces around him, the movie’s memorable scenes are moments of kindness. “Little” escapes into a crack-house to escape bullies and is found by a drug dealer (Mahershala Ali). This man turns into a kind of mentor through time and at one point teaches ‘Little’ how to swim. (To give a sense of how completely the Director uses the artform, this tiny sounding scene is one of the best parts in a great movie complete with poetic exchanges and a striking orchestral score). “Chiron” dealing with a deteriorating home life finds solace in the home of Theresa, the surviving spouse of the drug dealer. And in all three timelines Little/Chiron/Black starts, continues, and reignites a friendship with Kevin (Old Kevin is played by Andre Holland).

I feel like I’m doing a disservice to the movie by trying to describe it. All I’m going to say more is that this movie will likely be high on my made up Oscar category Best Use of a Song. It’s ‘Hello Stranger’ by Barbara Lewis. It occupies a moment that makes the picture worth a thousand words. And my main criticism of the movie is that it wasn’t long enough.

The Handmaiden (3/5 Stars)

I feel like my view of Korean cinema may be prejudiced by the narrow amount of movies I have seen from that region, three quarters of which have been by one director, Park Chan-Wook, who besides being one of the world’s greatest living directors also happens to be one of the most interested in exploring man’s capacity for cruelty. Is Korea a crueler place than the average? It seems like it though my sample size is stupidly small.

The main reason I saw "The Handmaiden" is because Park Chan-Wook directed it. His masterpiece remains 2003’s “Oldboy” a story that involves a man being randomly imprisoned in a room for fifteen years without ever being told why, and that’s just the beginning of his troubles. “Oldboy” isn’t the most violent movie I have seen but it is arguably the most intense and as such it is a textbook example of how a movie’s visceral impact has less to do with the amount of gore one sees but how that gore is presented and what story it is connected to. A similar thing can be said with “The Handmaiden” but with eroticism. There isn’t all that much sex or nudity in “The Handmaiden” (although the movie does not shrink from it at all either) but it is dealt with in a highly stimulating fashion. For one acquainted with American cinema, this is something hardly done. Sex in American movies is either purposefully ignored to assuage the MPAA or subject to more purely romantic feelings. When sex as a vehicle for lust is explicit in an American movie, it is generally the only thing in the movie worth watching, i.e. it is pornography. It is very rare that a well-made American movie will show sex in a provocative fashion. (The exception that proves the rule is Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut.”) But such is “The Handmaiden.” It is a movie that could see Oscar nominations for costumes, set design, and makeup, and it is unambiguously and unabashedly erotic.

The title character, handmaiden Sook-Hee (played by Kim Tae-ri) is a poor Korean girl in Japanese occupied Korea in the 1930s. She is recruited by a legacy hunter, Count Fujiwara (played by Jung-woo Ha), to be the handmaiden to the Lady Hideko (played by Min-hee Kim). Lady Hideko has been secluded from the world since a child in her large estate by her evil Uncle Kouzuki. The plan is for Sook-Hee to help Count Fujiwara to seduce Lady Hideko. He will marry the Lady, take the fortune, and then imprison her in an insane asylum. Sook-Hee will keep the Lady’s clothes, jewelry, and large sum of money.

There are many power dynamics intertwined with the sexual intrigue and this seems to be one of the main things that Director Park Chan-Wook is particularly interested in exploring. Lady Hideko is in control of Sook-Hee because she is her servant. Sook-Hee is in control of Lady Hideko because she is an innocent that Sook-Hee takes care of. “Ladies are truly the dolls of maids” thinks Sook-Hee to herself while dressing the Lady in her evening attire. The Count is manipulating both of them and tricking the Uncle who has ruthlessly ruled over the Lady her entire life. What the Uncle is doing to Lady Hideko exactly is one of the bigger reveals in the second half of the movie. The truth is less and more disturbing than you would think.

I suppose poor people when they feel lustful, just have sex. Sado-masochism seems to be an outgrowth of an upper class upbringing that promotes ascetic values, commercial productivity, polished manners, but, try as it might, cannot do away with base animal instinct. What results is a scene that can be as absurd as it is erotic. Lady Hideko is prostituted by her uncle to his wealthy gentlemen friends in a way that blurs the word’s meaning. She is made up, completely dressed in an elegant kimono, and placed far away on a stage that doubles as a zen garden. The men, dressed in tuxedos, are on the far side of the room, and do nothing but look at her and listen as she reads Justine by the Marquis de Sade or some other erotica. Afterwords the Uncle auctions off the book to the wealthy men. So is she is a prostitute? Technically, the men are buying and selling books. Eroticism is truly known and understood in the eye of the beholder. Bring up a man to be a gentleman and dress every woman he sees from calf to neck in Victorian clothing and the result is that a glimpse of ankle will become scandalously exciting. As a sexy mathematician in a dinosaur movie once put it about a completely different subject, “Life finds a way.”

One of the movie’s main pleasures is the twists and turns of its plots, so I won’t go too deep into them here except to make one gripe about the way things are revealed. When a movie uses voice over, it is supposed to relate that a scene is happening from that person’s point of view. When a story is told from a certain person’s point of view, the audience should know what that character knows at that moment. Unless of course, the character is trying to deceive the audience. But I never got the sense that any character was breaking the 4th wall and actually attempting to deceive me. So why didn’t I know everything that character knew at the time they knew it? This seems to me to be a lapse in storytelling discipline. No I’m not going to tell you what I’m talking about.

Christine (4/5 Stars)

“In keeping with the WBRZ policy, complete reports of the local blood and guts, TV 30 presents what is believed to be a television first and in living colour: An attempted suicide.”

These were the last words of Christine Chubbuck, a reporter for a local news station in Saratoga, Florida, before she shot herself in the back of the head on live television in 1974. What was perhaps so intriguing about the shocking act was its professionalism. Christine, a consummate reporter, wrote down her words in news copy and used the phrase “attempted suicide” because it was the precise way to describe what was about to happen, after all the suicide attempt might very well fail. She shot herself in the back of the head because that was where the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls the heart and lungs. Perhaps most importantly, she chose to do it on live TV in the news station. This way, the story could not be used on other stations without first mentioning the local TV station. Christine’s suicide became the station’s biggest story ever.

This movie, aptly titled “Christine” and directed by Antonio Campos is as good as any movie can get telling this particular story. Given that you know the ending, a feeling of dread settles over the entire experience and is given expression by a creepy haunting music score. But having said that, two things make the movie exceptional. The first is the screenplay by Craig Shilowich that provides context to Christine’s choice without being so presumptuous as to settle on one definitive answer for her choice. It also happens to be frequently funny with the station’s weatherman (played by Veep’s Timothy Simons) getting the most laughs. My favorite exchange has to do with the station manager (played by Tracy Letts) trying to persuade his employees to get more violent coverage. “If it bleeds, it leads,” he says and makes an argument as to how it will help ratings. “It’s just math,” he ends. “That’s not math, that’s logic.” retorts Christine.

The second is Rebecca Hall’s performance as the title character. She is present in every scene in this movie and her presence is a clear portrait of a seemingly functional person paralyzed with anti-social nerves, well-placed pride, and the subsequent paranoia. Her Christine comes across as a reporter too competent to be at a local backwater TV station but also too much of a work-a-holic to fully function as a social being. She knows she is better than her station but can’t handle her frustration at not being able to get past it or work through. And she may have too much pride to be able to do either if she wanted to. It is hinted that she once was a reporter at a bigger station, but the same nerves may have contributed to a nervous breakdown that got her fired there. Rebecca Hall’s nuances fill in all that we know and guesses at all we will never know about the person. This may be one of those movies that only gets a single Oscar Nomination, in this case a Best Actress nod for Rebecca Hall.

Christine situation is sad but our pity for her is tempered with the realization that she is as much her problem as is the world she is fighting against. Yes, the owner of the station wants more sensational storytelling and this may be exploitative news reporting, but does Christine really have to fight him tooth and nail and attack him personally over creative differences. Yes, she has a crush on the local anchor (played by Michael C. Hall) and they seemingly could make a good couple, but is it so sad that the romance never blossoms when she ends conversations and exits social gatherings prematurely. And is her reaction to these stumbling blocks, to hate herself and grow bitter at everybody else really the productive way to go about these problems. Her suicide, it seems, was the one thing she could do right when she wasn’t willing or able to do anything else correctly. And she did it right, just the way she meticulously planned it. It was memorable. It was shocking. And it said something about her and what she disliked most about her world. And in living colour.

The Birth of a Nation (2/5 Stars)

'There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

We were promised something and got its opposite. Producer, Director, Writer, and Lead Actor Nate Parker’s “The Birth of a Nation” was supposed to be a radical movie about Nat Turner, the leader of the Antebellum’s South largest slave revolt. But its tone is reactionary and its subject, slavery, has never looked so good in the last fifty years. One would have to go way back to find an example that could compare to slavery’s kid gloves handling in this movie. I was reminded of the 1960 version of “Spartacus” in which Kirk Douglas played the title character. It was an old-fashioned swords-and-sandals picture that showed little of the realities of slavery and found it plausible that a slave toiling in the salt mines could start a bloody revolution against an oppressive state with a movie star’s lack of desperation and the morals of a 1950’s after school special. There was one particular scene in that movie that was especially out of place. The slaves are allowed the company of concubines for a night but instead of having sex, Kirk Douglas lectures his prostitute about marital fidelity. We can forgive Kirk Douglas, as his movie was bound by censorship and the cautious dictates of powerful studios who believed a good pure love story was important to the prudent marketing of a family movie. These are excuses Nate Parker lacks. His reason for making a bullshit movie about a very important subject seems to rely entirely on the movie’s role as an unserious exercise in vanity. He made the main implausible and shaded him with gorgeous cinematography and make-up so he could look good. Most obvious are the battle scenes, which are blocked and shot in such a way that serves to glorify Parker at the expense of historical reality and/or simple logic. “The Birth of a Nation,” is offensive to the memory of all those that were ever slaves.

Perhaps Nate Parker did not mean to make a serious movie. Perhaps he meant to make a straight propaganda film, like the movie’s namesake and predecessor, D.W. Griffith’s 1915 movie “The Birth of a Nation.” Why anyone would want to perpetuate the legacy of that evil movie is beyond me, but like a petulant child hitting back because “they started it,” Nate Parker reengineers several techniques from the earlier movie, this time from the other side. The most glaring is the disgusting sexual argument for racism. In the 1915 movie, D.W. Griffith portrayed black men as leering sexual predators intent on corrupting white women. At one point, a woman commits suicide by jumping off a cliff in order to escape the touch of a black man. (The black man was played by a white man in “bad” black face so that the audience would know it wasn’t really a black man and thus would be not be outraged by seeing a black man trying to touch a white woman.) In the 2016 version, Nate Parker has done the same thing by casting only ugly fat white men and directing them to leer at various women, white and black, like they were pieces of meat. The white reverend (played by Mark Boone Junior) is a case study in an actor doing his best to be as degenerate as possible. This priest in no way downplays his carnal desires, drinks gin like water, and is never seen doing anything remotely Christian. In fact, there is not a single instance of white people doing anything sexually that is not some dark evil thing. And this includes places where it could be the obvious historical thing to do. For instance, Nat Turner’s owner (played by Armie Hammer) is unmarried for some reason. Perhaps this was because Nate felt that he didn’t want to show white people who were engaging in presumably consensual sex but more likely, as an exercise in vanity, he didn’t want himself to look bad. After all, the first act of Nat Turner’s rebellion was to kill Mr. and Mrs. Travis (not Mr. Turner as the movie has it) in their marital bed. Nate Parker has chosen here, in defiance of history, to not show movie Nat Turner kill any of the women and children the historical Nat Turner killed. Why? Because such a decision would have to be justified and when you do that, you no longer have a 1950’s style John Wayne movie hero of a character. Nate Parker probably would have to make the character complex enough to the point where the movie no longer remained propaganda. And that would in turn make Nate Parker not look so much like the risen Christ.

And Nat Turner in this movie is very much a religious prophet. The historical Nat Turner indeed had hallucinogenic visions and he also took an eclipse of the sun as a sign from God and an impetus for his rebellion. Looking back on it today, we may conclude that he may have had some sort of mental problem. This in no way argues that his cause was not moral. But it may help explain why so very few slaves in the Antebellum revolted. After all, the cause was entirely hopeless. Nat Turner managed to kill 40 whites in two days before the whites killed all the rebellious slaves and 100 more to send a message. Rebellion was rare because it was a crazy thing to do.

In this movie, Nate Parker takes Nat Turner’s historical propensity for visions and has decided to make him, quite literally, a “Magic Negro.” He gives him a birthmark, a prophecy in the forest with African chants, and other superhuman abilities (i.e. he can hide in a bush and become invisible). At one point Nat Turner is whipped for speaking the wrong bible verses (the many in the Bible that are against slavery). I counted the whips because at that point I was bored. There were thirty in total, although it may have been more because the movie was doing this fade-in fade-out thing that generally identifies the passage of time. Nate Parker has most certainly never been whipped before. His Nat Turner is whipped at least thirty times and left outside for an entire night. No human would be able to survive that. They would die of blood loss. Nate’s Nat Turner however, heroically decides to stand up at his post and for several hours awaits the coming of his master at dawn to finally free him for medical attention. During the night, all the other slaves put out candles in front of their doors in a show of solidarity. (It's such a stupid scene. All the candles are behind Nat so there's no way the character can see them. Also slaves don't have extra candles and even if they did, they would be too terrified to use them in such a way.)

This is not okay. It frankly reminded me of the bullshit scene in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” from 1954 that had a British general walk defiantly out of a hotbox after two days. The plantations in this movie are about as realistic as the Japanese concentration camp in that one. Why is this not okay? Because slavery happened. It was real and awful and it was not so simple as to be about not getting paid or somebody taking your woman. Slavery was evil because it killed people’s souls, both slave and slavemaster, but mostly the slave’s soul. It is hard to show this in a movie because characters need to make choices which, in turn, defines their character and makes them interesting. But slavery, more than any other system of oppression, limits a person’s choices, and as Vonnegut’s quote at the top of this essay puts it, discourages people from being characters. To show slavery as it really is would be undoubtedly a hard cinematic task. But to ignore this also softens the reality of slavery. And slavery is not a subject an artist, particularly an American artist, should ever take softly.

Nat Turner is quite possibly one of the most interesting historical figures ever, but the choices that man made in real life are not explored in this movie. These choices included, among other things, the decision to not only kill the white people who were sadistic and cruel to him, but also the white people who weren’t, particularly the women and children who had no say or power in the political community of the south. They included the question of Nat’s soul. As a preacher who knew the Bible, he knew that murder was wrong even in the face of wickedness. That is to say, he may have grappled with the idea that although he was avenging others he may have been damning himself in the process. And most of all, he must have known that the revolt would not be successful, and that in doing what he was about to do, he was going to be killed, his conspirators were going to be killed, his entire family would be killed, the families of the conspirators would be killed, and likely any black person who knew him would be killed as a result of his actions. What a movie this story becomes when these questions are taken seriously! It becomes a gritty, desperate, disturbing, horror story of a movie. A movie Nate Parker’s glossy “A Birth of a Nation” is not. Apparently the choices were too hard for Nate Parker to entrust his ego to.

I find it somewhat enjoyable that “The Birth of a Nation” flopped at the box office. It is undoubtedly a good thing and says nice things about the progression of our culture and race relations. Nate Parker, as it turns out, was one of those college athletes that sexually assault women and have their universities do their best to get them off the hook. He was involved in a gang rape of a blacked out college student (He was never charged but a friend of his that was there doing the same thing was). This student complained and he harassed her for several years. She dropped out of college and several years later committed suicide. It took a little bit of time before people realized there was no irony. Nate Parker viewed the women in his life and in his movie the same way. The women in “The Birth of a Nation,” have no characters or opinions of their own. They are used as examples of the property white men take from black men.

Even twenty years ago, this would not have mattered so much. If a black man was spiting white people it was okay to throw a woman under the bus to allow him to keep doing it (cough, O.J. cough, cough). But opportunity, particularly in the film industry whose production costs have plummeted allowing many people who were on the sidelines to now make quality films or, more likely, television, has expanded to the point where it seems we are no longer obligated to like a black film (whatever that means given that films are generally made by the collaboration of hundreds of people, but let’s apply it here) simply because it exists. We judge it as an equal like any other. So in light of a more fair and just society, Nate Parker, your movie sucks.

Masterminds (4/5 Stars)

To call “Masterminds” a movie “based on a true story,” streches that line about as far as it can go. Truth may have provided the basic premise: in 1997 a man named David Ghannt, an employee of the Loomis Fargo armored truck company, stole $17 million in cash from the warehouse he worked at. Everything else seems entirely made up for laughs with a blatant disregard as to whether the audience would believe it had actually happened. In fact, the movie plays like they just assumed we wouldn’t care. It was funny so I really didn’t care.

Take one scene foe example: After the robbery, the plan is for David Ghannt (played by Zach Galifinakis) to immediately run away to Mexico. To help his escape, he stuffs $20,000 in cash into his underwear to the point where it noticeably bulges out in all directions. Also he needs a disguise. So he is given a platinum blonde shoulder length wig and yellow contacts with feline pupils. It’s pretty funny but I’m quite certain the real David Ghannt didn’t try to get through airport security in that manner.

The movie was directed by Jared Hess (Napolean Dynamite, Nacho Libre) and arrives in theaters a year late due to the bankruptcy of its parent company. Its delay has two main consequences. One is that it represents a too-late starring vehicle for Zach Galifinakis whose star power has ebbed significantly from its peak in the early 2010s. He hasn’t headlined a movie since 2013. On the other hand, it catches on the upswing the growing star of Kaitlyn “Crazy Eyes” McKinnon, who in a supporting part shows off her innate ability to be funny in every frame shes in. A year ago, before Ghostbusters and Hillary Clinton’s endless campaign (McKinnon plays Clinton on “Saturday Night Live”) my reaction may have been “Who is she?” but now it is “Oh it’s her!”

The movie would have you believe David Ghannt did the heist to win the love of Kelly Campbell, a former co-employee, here played by Kristin Wiig. Who knows if that is true, but it certainly makes Ghannt look more pathetic, a good move playing to the talent of Zach Galifinakis. The brain behind the heist is a man named Steve Chambers (played by Owen Wilson). Owen Wilson proves his stock utility as reliably affable. Steve Chambers apparently had the brilliant idea to make Ghannt do all the hard work, send him to Mexico, and then pay a hit man (played by Jason Sudeikis) to kill Ghannt. That sounds like pretty dark stuff. Owen Wilson plays him like you know it’s all really sad, but we got to do this, so let’s just get it over with and remain friends with everyone who is still alive. Playing Chamber’s wife is Mary Elizabeth Ellis (the waitress from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), an actress adept at playing white trash and well suited to her role. She looks and sounds ridiculous. One of the first things Chambers and her do upon receiving their money is to get dental braces.

The only person miscast here is Jason Sudeikis. His hit man is ridiculous. For instance, upon purchasing guns, he decides to go for the 1700s musket that he has to pour gunpowder into. He’s that type of guy. The problem is Sudeikis neither looks nor acts anything like anybody actually tough. It’s too cartoonish and this character would have been better had someone like Liam Neeson or Danny Trejo been cast.

The movie, like many movies, perhaps leans too much on spectacle. Zach Galifinakis’ trip to Mexico is littered with many jokes that could be filed under the ‘funny hat’ category. It’s never not funny but also not particularly memorable either. And the climax of the story is too big to truly ground the comedy. The Chambers family in an act of profound stupidity, that is never truly mined for its great potential, throw a gigantic redneck party entitled “Neptune’s Conch” in their new McMansion. The FBI stake it out in one plotline and Zach Galifinakis in another plotline dresses like James Bond in order to infiltrate and rescue his now kidnapped love. This is one of those times when you wonder what these obviously talented people would have come up with had they not been given such a large budget to spend on gigantic spectacle. “Ghostbusters” earlier this year had the same sort of problem in its climax. The movie slipped into action movie territory upon the greased slide of easy money when it should have been reaching an emotional climax in that higher territory where the best comedy resides. In effect, the ending is weaker than the beginning or middle.

Still it’s a good movie. It tries to deliver laughs a minutes and much more often than not succeeds.

War Dogs (4/5 Stars)

Miles Teller does not understand why a twenty-something guy like him, who was a physical therapist a few months ago, is making a living running guns for the United States' war in Iraq. It’s like this, Jonah Hill, his childhood friend and current employer explains: Remember little league where at the end of the year they would only give out one trophy to the Most Valuable Player. Then one year a parent complained and so they had to start giving out trophies out to everyone. Even the fat retarded kid got a trophy. Well the Bush-Cheney people fucked up big. When Halliburton got all the big contracts for the Iraq War, all the other mid-range suppliers’ strarted screaming unfair. So now there is this website that anybody and I mean anybody can bid for contracts on and that’s how we are in this business.

“So you’re the fat retarded kid?” asks Miles.

“Dude, I’m the fattest and most retarded kid there is!” exclaims Jonah.

Such is the backdrop for this stranger-than-fiction tale from director Todd Phillips. Phillips, known as a comedy director (Old School, The Hangover) is expanding his creative scope here and make no mistake, although “War Dogs” has a lot of laughs, it is drama, and a very well made one at that.

The screenplay was co-written by Phillips and Steven Chin. Chin has an interesting story. In his young twenties he became interested in doing a story about two young arms runners in Iraq. So he went to Iraq to interview them and get their story rights. This story isn’t exactly about those two guys but Chin’s experiences, and his innate ability to understand the type of person who would go half way across the world on a whim in search of forturne, lends this story the its impressive amount of rich contextual detail.

There is nothing I like more than a story that is told by people who seem to really know what they are talking about. “War Dogs” is that type of movie. When Miles and Jonah (I’m writing this review so late that I have forgotten the names of the main characters) need to solve problems, they need to solve very specific ones. For instance, they have a contract to deliver a certain amount of Remington handguns to  a particular general in Iraq. The Italian legislature has just passed a bill outlawing the selling of arms to Iraq. So Miles and Jonah (under threat of never getting business again if they do not deliver) need to redirect their Italian handguns to Jordan, bribe the local officials, and then personally drive the hand guns through Anbar province to Baghdad.

When I speak of the power of details in strong action storytelling this is a good example. The nitty-gritty down to earth stuff lends suspense to a journey regular action blockbusters can’t deliver even with the help of giant robots and the destruction of entire cities. And you might learn something too like bribable soldiers like Marlboro cigarettes.

At its heart, “War Dogs” in is a story about a small business start-up and has all the hallmarks of the trials and tribulation of a good business tale. It has unpaid subcontractors, personal disputes between partners, the joy of success, and the business deal that goes wrong and then goes really wrong. This movie could maybe have been made about any small business but it says a lot about movies, and storytelling in general, that business movies are generally only about two types of businesses: Drugs and Guns. Businesses are perhaps inherently boring or put another way, if they go well, should be boring and so most businesses in movies generally have outside action to enliven the experience of them. How many times have you seen a movie about a bank robber? And how many times have you seen a movie about a bank manager that operates a bank efficiently and competently? That's my point.

As a member of a two man small business, it was fun for me to see a movie like this with my employer. It felt very right. I mean besides the fact that Jonah, the boss in the movie, is a sociopath. My boss isn’t like that. That's obvious enough. I'm not sure why I even mentioned it.

However, going back to Jonah Hill. He is great in this movie. There are certain actors that can really stretch a performance to hit as many notes as possible and in this movie there is not a scene that Jonah is not doing something interesting or funny in it. It is odd that I need to say this next thing given that he already has two Oscar nominations, but Jonah Hill is a great actor with considerable range. Given his girth, there is really not so many other actors like him that can fully supersede the comedy genre and become full-fledged dramatic actors. But he can do it and I look forward to see him do it for a while in the future. (On an irrelevant note: He has successfully gained back the entirety of the weight he impressively lost over the past couple years. That's too bad. I bet he's really struggling about it.)

Bradley Cooper also shows up as a heavy dramatic presence in this movie. It is a role I haven’t seen him play before but he does a good job at being scary enough. My favorite line, “I am not a bad man, but in my line of business, I sometimes have to ask myself: what would a bad man do?”

Ghostbusters (4/5 Stars)

This Ghostbusters is not a remake (in which the same characters do the same things) or a sequel (in which the same characters do different things) but a reboot. It has the same name and the same overall structure but different characters that do different things. For example, in the first Ghostbusters (1984), the crew look for office space and stumble upon an old fire station in Tribeca, New York. The place is a piece of junk in a terrible neighborhood but it is thankfully cheap enough for them. In the reboot, the new crew looks for office space and is shown the same fire station. This time they are told it costs $21,000 a month in rent.

It’s a good joke and one this movie tells many times. However, doing so reveals the weirdness of the movie. See if you can wrap your head around this. In the 2016 version of Ghostbusters, the 1984 Ghostbusters don’t exist. That in and of itself is normal for a reboot. What is weird is that the reboots wrings every callback opportunity possible out of the earlier film. Some examples: The Ghostbusters logo is “serendipitiously” created by a graffiti artist, the original cast shows up in cameos and quote the original’s catchphrases, and a giant stay puff marshamallow man is fought in the climatic scene. The movie treats these situations as if the movie knows about the original film, but the characters in the 2016 version don’t know about the original film. So there’s a disconnect between what the audience experiences and what the characters experience because the audience remembers the thing that is being called back in a scene but none of the characters in that scene remember it. Like I said, weird.

It is fun to hear all these callbacks but I would posit that it hurts this movie’s ability to be a stand-alone movie because to understand these many jokes one would need to see the original movie. A viewer who has not seen the original would probably be confused as to why the movie would make such a big deal about a callback moment when the characters themselves, by definition, can’t. To draw a contrast, take the movie “Creed.” That was a reboot too in a way. But the new character existed in the same time universe as the original so when it made callbacks it made sense for the characters to feel the weight of them. Those moments do not work in this reboot (if you take the time to think about it) and that is this Ghostbusters oddest and biggest mistake.

It’s an odd mistake because this movie probably didn’t need the callbacks and nostaligic jokes. This movie is a “Bridesmaids” reunion, a movie that will be a classic once I convince everyone. It is directed by Paul Feig and stars both Kristin Wiig and Melissa McCarthy. Kristin Wiig continues to impress. She has been cast in this movie as the straight man (she is a scientist at Columbia trying to distance herself from a ghost book she co-wrote with Melissa so she can gain tenure) so she has not as many opportunities to be funny but that doesn’t stop her from having the movie’s funniest moment in a restaurant freaking out in front of the mayor. She should be funnier more times but this is not really her fault, as I will explain later.

Melissa McCarthy continues to be not as funny to me as she apparently is to everyone else. I would compare her to Zach Galifinakis. She rose to stardom in a very well written supporting role, which has been hard to translate into mainstream comedic stardom. What seems to happen, just like Zach, is that most of her funny moments come about not through chracter revelations but from non-sequitor asides, quite a few of which distract from the narrative flow of the movie. There is one more thing and this actually does happen to do with her gender. Melissa McCarthy is fat but won’t do fat jokes. This distinguishes her from every male of ample gut that calls himself a comedian. Her writers won’t do it also (here that is Katie Dippold and Paul Feig) and it leads to some unbelievable situations, like in “The Heat” where she is cast as the sexually vigorous and attractive one opposite to Sandra Bullock of all people. Unfortuately for our politically correct culture, fat jokes will always be funny because (obesity epidemic due to subsidized corn syrup excepted) it is fundamentally true that they reveal character (unlike say racial jokes or misogynistic jokes). And jokes that reveal character are and will always be the best ones. Melissa McCarthy’s pride ignores this to her own peril as a comedian. It is about time for her to own it and join the big boys of comedy (Rodney Dangerfield, John Candy, John Belushi, Zero Mostel, Jack Black, Jim Gaffigan, Jason Alexander, to name but a few).

The revelation in this movie is Kate McKinnon. She is hilarious. I’ve known her a little bit from Saturday Night Live (she is probably going to blow up big time impersonating Hillary Clinton this fall) but have never seen her in a movie. She reminds me of the early freewheeling zaniess of Jim Carrey in a 5’5” frame. Making her more fun is that she is in charge of the really dangerous equipment. She does a dance at one point with blowtorches. Classic McKinnon.

The fourth is Leslie Jones. She fills the Ernie Hudson role and then some. In fact she shows up earlier, has more jokes, and says more smart things (she reads lots of nonfiction and knows all sorts of things about the city) than Hudson ever did in the original. It doesn’t matter. This Ghostbusters, unlike the first, is getting shit for not giving the black woman a role as a scientist, as opposed to the (apparently undignified) job as an MTA worker. I’m not sure what Ernie Hudson was doing in the first Ghostbusters. He shows up three quarters of the way through and then doesn’t really do anything in it besides postulate about the end-of-the-world, but if he was absent from that one and Leslie Jones (who is only here because of Ernie’s presence in the first) was absent from this one, the only thing missing would be the liberal outrage.

(I’ve been trying to figure out why this sort of controversy irks me so much. I can only ascribe it to what I would consider an unfounded and pathetic sense of entitlement amongst those that are outraged (not just black people of course, I remember Mahnola Dargis of the NYTimes complaining about it too.) Its unfounded because to tell a good story, even one with paranormal elements, it helps to set it in a realistic context. I think it is fair to say that a black person in NYC in 2016 is more likely to work for the MTA than for Columbia University as a scientist. If that is a problem, it is a problem for the real world. It is not a detriment to Ghostbusters to merely reflect reality. That is to say the solution to this problem should be to fix it in the real world, not insist that a movie project falseness. Its pathetic because (and I shudder to accuse people of this) it insists that a person’s self-esteem comes from how they see other people who look like them are portrayed in movies. It should be a basic thing taught to all five-year-olds that movies should not dictate how one feels about themselves. To say Ghostbusters, of all movies, made you feel less than, well, that’s just, it’s just one of the saddest things I could possibly hear someone say.)

The largest difference between the original and the reboot has to be the extraordinary progression of digital effects in movies. The comparison is a good reminder that being able to do anything with computers does not necessarily make it better than the old cheap way. The special effects in the original were crappy but they had thought in them and quite a few of them were jokes. In the reboot, the effects are so big that it is damn near impossible for them to be comedic. There is a big action sequence at the end in which the ghosts of New York City past attack the four ghostbusters. It is notable for its lack of laughs while being great to look at. Roger Ebert made the observation that the original movie was an exception to the general rule that big special effects can wreck a comedy. He explained:

“Special effects require painstaking detail work. Comedy requires spontaneity and improvisation; or at least that’s what is should feel like, no matter how much work has gone into it…rarely has a movie this expensive provided so many quotable lines.”

The suits in charge of the reboot have, like so many recent movies, used big budget spectacle, nostalgic throwbacks, and political correctness (where are the ghost hookers of Time Square in the climatic battle? Why are they fighting pilgrims instead?) as a crutch in the place of character, creativity, and originality. The tragedy is that all the ingredients for greatness are here but they have not been given space to breathe and grow. In the meantime it’s good enough. Perhaps the sequel will do a better job at making the apocalypse work for the comedy and not the other way around. At least there should be less callbacks.

Finding Dory (3/5 Stars)

“Finding Dory” is special in that special way that special people are special. It isn’t great but it has a lot of heart and its not mean or bad in anyway so what’s the harm in liking it.

It is a spinoff from one of Pixar’s best movies, “Finding Nemo.” In that movie a very worried father fish, Marlin, voiced by Albert Brooks, is searching for his lost son Nemo. On his journey he meets his polar opposite, a fish named Dory, voiced by Ellen Degeneres. Dory had a personality quirk that was all the rage in the early aughts: she suffered from the inability to create new memories. Yes, like that guy in “Memento” and Drew Barrymore in “Fifty First Dates.” She provided a delightful foil to the always anxious Marlin what with her blissfully optimistic mantra “Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming” and her complete inability to remember what her problems were or even what was Marlin’s mission.

She was a great sidekick. She is not so great a main character. For one thing, her character needs a reworking that doesn’t exactly fit with what we have been previously told about her. That is for the plot to kick in she has to first remember a rather big that she forgot: she had lost her way from her parents when she was young. Why she remembers this now and some other things at various times when she can’t remember anything else strains the suspension of disbelief. People pointed out that the main character in “Memento” implausibly remembered that he couldn’t create new memories. Dory has that one memory quirk as well and then a bunch of other memory quirks that surface up continually when…well whenever the story needs her to remember something for it to progress forwards.

This doesn’t happen too much but that in and of itself is also a problem. For Dory needs to find her parents somehow, and the only way she can do that plausibly is to simplistically bumble into them. So the story structure reflects that and in doing so is especially linear and almost entirely predictable. The problem solving required is at minimum capacity otherwise Dory would be completely helpless or not Dory at all.

It does not take many twists and turns to get Dory very close to where she needs to go and that is an Ocean Aquarium that rehabilitates injured fish before releasing them back in the wild. The nature of this aquarium seems to reflect the politically correct view towards aquariums nowadays in that they are more like prisons for the large animals in them than homes. Thus this aquarium has at its stated goal to rehabilitate injured fish and then at some point release them back into the wild. Good, now we can look at fish behind glass and not feel guilty about it.

At this aquarium she finds several “special” animals willing to help her. The best by far is a wily Octopus named Hank (played by Ed O’Neill of all people). Hank by and large solves the problem of how a fish can get around a big above ground place. He slithers along and camoflauges himself to fake out the humans. It is most definitely based on the true life notorious octopus that escaped from an aquarium via a drainage pipe a couple of years ago.

Other animals are more forgettable. Sometimes the most interesting thing about the character is who is ultimately voicing them. For instance, there are two sea lions voiced by Dominic West and Idris Elba, both of whom played main characters in “The Wire.” I got a kick out of that because I am a fan of “The Wire” That is to say my pleasure in watching them here is derivative as opposed to original. That is especially true of the disembodied cameo of Sigourney Weaver who introduces herself over the Aquarium loudspeaker as Sigourney Weaver and continues to provide information about the park as Sigourney Weaver. I wonder if small children several decades born after the apex of the Aliens franchise will know who Sigourney Weaver is? I liked it sure but that has very little to do with the substance of this movie. I just happen to like Sigourney Weaver.

I expect the message of the movie is the most commendable thing about it. It’s very kind and nice and comfort food. I hate to be a total downer and say that the idea that every one is special in their own special way and that certain specialness makes them useful in ways that other not special people cannot be is not entirely correct. But really think about it. Dory’s special ability (or disability more like it) to optimistically and impulsively act upon no evidence (because she can’t remember any) is not an entirely special quality. Her success, let’s be frank, is mostly luck. She could just as easily be someone's lunch many many times. 

I really don’t think I’m missing the point. I get the point. I understand why parents would like to tell their children that everything will be okay no matter how badly their genes have failed them. I just don’t happen to agree with it. I much prefer a movie like Pixar’s “Inside Out” that has the emotional maturity to see life with clear eyes. “Finding Dory” is all fluff.

The Lobster (4/5 Stars)

“The Lobster” is such an original movie that to describe it would necessarily require a comprehensive rehashing of the plot. I simply cannot say it is like some other movie you know. But to not rehash the entire movie and only focus on the beginning would also be to sell itself short because one of the more interesting characters (Rachel Weisz) is only introduced halfway through and what happens with her and the main character, i.e. the Lobster (Colin Farrell) is more interesting than what happens in the first half. But for the second part to make any sense, one needs to understand the first part, and I can’t do that without giving it all away. So just take my word for it: Rachel Weisz is great in this movie and I can’t tell you why.

It starts with The Lobster checking into the Hotel on the Seashore next to a Forest away from the City. He has been recently divorced. The Hotel, a creature of the State, will allow him to stay for 45 days to find himself a mate. If he doesn’t they will turn him into an animal. He gets to choose the animal. He chooses Lobster. It isn’t a completely arbitrary choice. As he explains the animal will live a long time and he likes the sea. So it works in a way. And that in a nutshell is how this movie works (more a miracle the more I think about it). It chooses seemingly arbitrary and bizarre rules to follow and then with a totally straight face follows them without flinching. The result is an sincere, engrossing, and surprisingly consistent romantic comedy. And it is a romantic comedy as strange as that may sound when applied to a movie such as this.

No State in the known world would ever force people to find a mate within 45 days before turning them into an animal. And that is likely because no state in the known world deals with the kind of hopelessly anti romantic people that inhabit this movie. Colin Farell along with his new guy friends John C. Reilly and Ben Whishaw do not want to be turned into animals. Neither do the females at the Hotel. But at the same time there seems to be an unwritten rule that couples need to have a unique trait in common. Ben Whishaw has a limp. John C. Reilly has a lisp. There is this really hot girl who eventually gets turned into a pony because she can’t find anyone else who has great hair.

The Hotel has seminars and mixers in which relationships are promoted in the least appetizing way possible. There is a rule against masturbating in the hotel and the maids, as part of their job desciption, are to dry hump the guests (but not to climax) in order to stimulate them to find mates amongst the other guests. As Colin Farrell understatedly intones, “Awful, just awful.”

If this is a satire on something I don’t know what that could possibly be and honestly I do not really care. I don’t want to think there is an agenda behind this movie. If there were it would be a stupid way to push it because nothing in here has anything to do with reality. The only way it works is by its own rules all by itself. And encapsulated as such, it sets its rules out clearly follows them steadfastly and exploits them for humorous and romantic effect.

To make matters more interesting, the outcasts of this mandatory romantic society are a guerilla band of loners who carry out terrorist missions targeted to break up the couples at the retreat. The guests at the hotel are given tranquilizer guns and every once in a while bussed to the woods where they can earn an extra day for each loner they capture. There is a heartless woman guest (played by Aggeliki Papoulia) that is particularly adept at hunting other human beings. She is at 158 days currently. Hilarity and Tragedy ensues when The Lobster tries to woo her by pretending to be heartless as well.

The movie is filled end to end with interesting details: for example when the loners celebrate they listen to electronic music with headphones. That way even when they are celebrating together they dance alone. And in the city, a person shopping alone can be stopped by the police and asked for their marriage certificate. The movie was directed by Yorgos Lathimos and also co-written by him. He is obviously a type of insane.

Anchoring the movie is Colin Farrell who has turned into a special actor. I remember him quite well as someone I would point out as rather bad (or at least miscast). He was doing these great epic roles (Alexandar, The New World, Miami Vice) and doing them, frankly, not so well. But then he had a career turnaround in “In Bruges,” in which he played a down and out suicidal loser who, quite importantly, had the same accent as his very own Irish brogue. It was a revelation. His true calling was not as blockbuster hero. It was as a loser and he has excelled in that role ever since. His turn in “True Detective: Season 2,” “Seven Psychopaths,” and most importantly this movie prove that he is at his best playing broken men. Colin Farrell brings a pathos and honest humor to this character that seems entirely tuned to him. This is his best role and I would argue an Oscar nomination for it.

Rachel Weisz, as we all know and I hope I have written about before, is great and a very big movie girlfriend of mine. I wish I could tell you what she does in this movie without giving away the last half of the movie except to say, like everything she does, it is perfect. (I never got to rave about her comedic performance in “The Brothers Bloom” but for fucks sake wasn’t that revelatory). She’s worthy of a great romantic gesture. I’ve said too much already.

John C. Reilly rises to the occasion again as a welcome competent face in a movie totally out there with no money backing it. I’m reminded a little bit of his work in “Cedar Rapids.” He is a great team player. Also there is Lea Seydoux playing against type as queen of the loners given she is currently one of the sexiest women in movies (Blue is the Warmest Color, Mission Impossible). Then there is Ben Whishaw who is also very good. Everybody in this movie, amazingly, is very good at playing people who do not resemble humans in a world that does not resemble reality. It’s great acting drawn from great directing and writing by Yorgos Lathimos who, as I related before, is probably insane. Anyway I vote for an Oscar Nomination for Best Original Screenplay, the key word being Original. Want a cold breath of fresh air in your movie going experience. Go see “The Lobster.”