A Star is Born (4/5 Stars)

Most popular movies spawn sequels. This is the case when we are more in love with the characters and/or the movie stars. “A Star is Born” is the type of movie that finds its staying power in its archetypal plot. This particular plot can be categorized as an evolutionary offshoot of Pygmalion, that ancient myth about a male sculptor who labors over the sculpture of his perfect woman. The goddess Aphrodite is so impressed by his creation that he deigns to grant one wish of the sculptor. The sculptor wishes that his perfect woman was real. Aphrodite grants that wish and the perfect woman becomes flesh, climbs down from her pedestal and embraces the artist. This myth has as its progeny in every “make-over” play and movie that followed, the best “My Fair Lady”. The “A Star is Born” plot is disarmingly simple but powerful. A famous man spies a talented but unknown woman. He helps her with her career. She becomes a star. Meanwhile, his personal demons and substance abuse set his career path on a downward trajectory. The movie is especially powerful in its treatment of its themes. Fame has both good and bad facets. Personal relationships are both a help and a hindrance. Art is created by both good fortune and personal destruction. Meanwhile we are treated to mandatory great performances, that which must attest as to why the Stars in the story should be considered Stars. For this reason, “A Star is Born” is continually remade. You know the story, but then you’ve always known it. What is interesting is how it is being done this time. And of course, the success of the movie ultimately depends on the “A Star is Born” test: The plot states that the characters are Stars? Do the actors and creators of this movie live up to this description?

A Star is Born (2018) was directed by the actor Bradley Cooper who also has a writing credit. along with two other screenwriters and a host of other story credits for the past three iterations of this movie. Bradley Cooper also acts in this movie in the lead role of Jackson, a country music rock star. I don’t know if he can actually play the guitar or whether that is actually him singing, but it sure looks like it. Bradley Cooper also speaks fluent French. Just thought I’d throw that out there. The look and feel of A Star is Born is a simple and straightforward style. You get the feeling that it does not really matter that Bradley Cooper is the director. However, one must recognize that the director’s invisibility is also a choice of the director. Bradley Cooper has decided to draw attention to his characters not his director’s self. This is probably a good idea.

Bradley Cooper is eminently believable as a country-music star named Jackson. One night, Jackson, needing a drink after a concert, randomly walks into a bar populated by drag-queens. They are tolerant of him and he of they. The drag-queens are having a revue. It’s almost all drag-queens, but they have made an exception. An old employee of the bar named Ally, played by Stephanie Germanotta aka Lady Gaga, performs a perfect rendition “La Vie En Rose”. Jackson falls in love with Ally’s talent, if not yet her person, at first sight. It is important to stress here the importance of this scene and how it is acted. We as an audience have to come to realization along with Jackson that we are watching a first-rate albeit unknown talent. To do this, Lady Gaga has to sing and perform a great version of “La Vie En Rose” without production value, backup, or flash. She does. The pipes on that girl. Holy shit.

Here is where the movie really works and what makes it arguably the best “Star is Born” to date. The soundtrack of this movie is first rate and performed by fantastic artists. Bradley Cooper can’t be said to be a great musician or vocalist, but he doesn’t noticeably suck either. I liked his songs. Lady Gaga just absolutely kills it every time she opens her mouth and/or is on some sort of stage. What is also interesting is the variety of music in the movie. Jackson has some good fast and slow country songs. Lady Gaga starts out in this vein and then, true to her character, she becomes her own star with her own voice, which in the 2018 version includes pop songs. There are also the customary romantic ballads. Like the best musicals, there isn’t a song which makes you want to fast forward the movie to the better songs. Can Lady Gaga act? Yes, and with brown hair. I bet she can speak fluent French too. These freaking talented people.

A Star is Born is further populated with interesting choices for supporting characters. Ally’s father is wannabe crooner turned blue collar limo driver. He is played by Andrew Dice Clay, a former comedian, who seems to have gotten out of bed playing the role. There is a certain warmth that one would not expect, but when he beams with pride about his daughter’s success you totally believe it and feel enthused with him. Another character that flits into the movie is an old colleague of Jackson, that had lived fast for a while and then moved on. He is played by the comedian Dave Chappelle. Something about the way Chappelle speaks, his laid back delivery of precise words, sounds preternaturally wise. I enjoyed his presence. The movie is populated with non-actors (I think the pop producer character might be an actual producer). They all do fine work.

Is this the best “A Star is Born”. Well, I wouldn’t know. I’ve only seen the Judy Garland version. I can say this one is better than that one. I never bought a forty-year old Judy Garland as a twenty-year old neophyte (whereas Lady Gaga here seems to be playing her own age). I’m pretty sure this is better than the Barbara Streisand version simply because I’m pretty sure Babs wouldn’t allow her ego to act like she wasn’t a Star the entire way through the movie. The first movie I heard does not have any music. A bet this “A Star is Born” is the best one. I look forward to the next one, like thirty years from now.

Machete Kills (3/5 Stars)

Back from the Dead with an Unexpectedly Entertaining Third Act

Writer/Director Robert Rodriguez is back with Danny Trejo as Machete, the ex-CIA, ex-FBI, ex-DEA, ex-federale turned illegal immigrant day laborer turned outlaw turned ICE agent. The character Machete by definition works better in two-minute trailers rather than two-hour movies. His main characteristics are looking like Danny Trejo (best described by one critic as, “a man who had a staring contest with the sun and won”) never dying and killing people. He had his start in a fake movie trailer accompanying Rodriguez’s zombie masterpiece “Planet Terror.” (I’m basically the only one who calls that movie a masterpiece and am trying to spread the word). Machete is a man of few words and, given Danny Trejo’s impending old age, works better when he stands still and glares and less when he actually fights people. In the end, what makes, “Machete Kills” ultimately worth seeing is a few other characters namely Michelle Rodriguez’s “She” (pronounced like “Che” of Guevera fame) and the new bad/crazy guy Mel Gibson. Unfortunately the entrances of these two characters come in the movie’s third act. Before that the movie slogs a bit in the territory of so-bad-it’s-bad before ultimately triumphing in a satisfying so-bad-it’s-good ending.

The badness of the first two acts of “Machete Kills” needs a detour into an education in the Grindhouse genre in order to fully explain. For those unacquainted a “Grindhouse” movie are B movies that promise sex and violence and nothing else. By definition these movies can’t be great in the classic sense (say ‘Citizen Kane’) but they can succeed, and some succeed spectacularly, in never being boring. Robert Rodriguez, that very underrated American treasure of a director, specializes in elevating this type of movie from B-level trash into high art (Sin City, Planet Terror). But just because they are not good in the classic sense does not mean that they automatically find themselves within the so-bad-it’s-good genre. Rodriguez doesn’t make bad movies per se. He makes good Grindhouse movies. Let’s use some of Rodriguez’s previous work as the gold standard of this type of movie we can give some guidelines to further elaborate on this tricky area of cinema. 

First the action and plot must move fast. The Grindhouse format is especially conducive to this in that plot holes are usually present. However in a good Grindhouse picture the plot hole should resemble a short cut that propels the story forward faster than it normally would in a regular picture. A great example is the ‘Missing Reel’ in Planet Terror that lands the audience in the middle of a battle thereby skipping the needless part of the enemy actually showing up to the fight. Also given that the plot does not need to make perfect sense, it might as well be sensational. “Machete Kills” involves drug cartels in jungle castles and a nuclear bomb aimed at Washington D.C. That is good so far. Unfortunately “Machete Kills” clocks in at around two hours. There is too much here and later I will give an example of what to cut. These movies really should be no more than 90 minutes.

Second, the action does not have to be realistic but it does have to be novel. In other words, it doesn’t matter how many people die or how gory it is just as long as the way they die is surprising and dare I say, clever. This is basically what makes a great Grindhouse movie fun to watch. The creative love that is put into the violence evidences something more in the maker than simply sadism. This detail is also what separates a great Grindhouse movie (like Raimi’s Evil Dead series) from the torture porn genre (Saw series). In a way that makes “Machete Kills” different from “Machete” is that there is a sizably less amount of cleverness that goes into the action sequences. In “Machete Kills” there are far too many scenes where opposing forces show up across open spaces and fire machine guns at each other. By too many scenes I basically mean more than one. There was only one in “Machete,” and it worked fantastically by itself. I suspect that because this is a sequel Rodriguez may have felt that he had to start off where he left off and started with machine guns instead of going back to the workable formula in “Planet Terror” and “Machete” of hand-to-hand combat than melee weapons than guns and than finally a big ass gun battle. “Machete” has good gags (I especially liked how Machete how defused a bomb in midair while riding it) but went on autopilot a few too many times.

Third a great Grindhouse movie has to like its women characters. By “like” I don’t mean that they have to do nice things or dress conservatively. What I mean is that there has to be more to them than just skimpy clothing and a bad attitude. Or to put it another way: it has to be a role that the actress playing it would obviously enjoy playing or at least find challenging in a professional sense. This is a particularly important guideline given the immense amount of Grindhouse and horror movies that employ their women characters to do nothing but scream and die in terrible ways. Rodriguez in general does well by his actresses, not an easy thing to do given the thin line he is walking in this genre. (Again take a look at Rose McGowan in “Planet Terror”). In “Machete Kills” I think he does well by Lady Gaga and Michelle Rodriguez who have memorable/badass fight scene. He does okay by Amber Heard who could have had more to do. But one character is not treated well and that is the sadistic bordello madame played by Sofia Vergara from TV’s Modern Family. She tries to kill Machete with her Double Ds, a type of machine gun that doubles as a bra (try not to think about where the ammo comes from). The problem is not the Double Ds. The problem is that there really is not much to the character besides that. She has no good lines and is routinely frustrated in not so clever ways in battle. Rodriguez should have just cut the whole subplot. It didn’t work and without it the movie would be the correct length.

In the “Machete” series Rodriguez has done something that is not really necessary according to my made up guidelines but is ultimately interesting to watch and that is his stunt casting. Rodriguez goes out of his way to employ actors/actresses who are unemployable due to career ending scandals. In the first movie he cast Lindsay Lohan (multiple arrests for disorderly conduct) and Steven Seagall (famously awful actor in terrible movies). In this movie we are treated to Charlie Sheen as Carlos Esteves (“Winning!”) and Mel Gibson (stuff I’m not about to write here). Unlike Lindsay and Seagall, Carlos and Mel are actually good actors and they do remarkably well playing the President of the United Stated and Crazy Bad Guy named Voz respectively. Truly Rodriguez is a kindhearted man who is always willing to give the fallen from grace a second chance to redeem themselves in movies that contain ridiculous amounts of violence and bad taste. 

There must be something to say about Rodriguez’s political consciousness. It is present in the ‘Machete’ movies even if they are just throwaway motivations for characters than actual lucid political arguments about illegal immigration and drug war policy. Still it makes an admirer wonder what Rodriguez could do if he actually attempted to make a serious movie about these topics. I’m sure he could do it. I’m also sure he would do it only if he really really wanted to do it. I can’t think of another director who seems to make movies purely for his own enjoyment and the enjoyment of his family (an example is the Spy Kids franchise. Rodriguez is the only filmmaker I know of that would make a feature length film based on the story idea of his five-year-old child.) He seems to be completely divorced from the type of greed that would induce him to make his films more mainstream or the type of awards acclaim that would make him choose more conventional subjects for his art. I like this guy a lot.  

For those of you with keen eyes you may also spy the Crazy Babysitter Twins and Rodriguez’s actual doctor (who looks like he’s lost a good deal of weight). They don’t have much to say in this movie though they were part of the group of characters taken into space on Crazy Bad Guy’s rocket ship in anticipation of the next movie. The title of that one is “Machete Kills Again…IN SPACE.” And yes I am very interested in seeing that as well.