Thor: Ragnarok (4/5 Stars)

For those that felt Thor would be more entertaining if his tragic flaw was stupidity as opposed to pride (see my review of “Thor”) and did not bother seeing the second movie because it looked more stilted and oppressive than the first, the third movie in the “Thor” saga is exactly the course-correction the character and story sorely needed.

One half of the story is business-as-usual. There is a political crisis in Asgaard. Odin has finally died (or has he?) and his long-lost daughter, Hella, played by none other than Cate Blanchett, has come back from the throne. As she is Odin’s eldest issue and apparently was his right-hand person in establishing Odin’s empire, she has a pretty good argument for being Queen. Thor, played by Chris Hemsworth, and his brother Loki, Tom Hiddleston, aren’t going for it though and try to start a fight. She defeats them handily and even crushes Thor’s mighty hammer.

Thor lost his hammer in the first movie, but whereas in that movie the event inspired soul-searching and just a little bit of crying, in this movie Thor’s loss of his hammer merely serves to knock a few power notches off the characters ability points so the fights he undertakes afterwards are fairer and funnier. Thor finds himself on a garbage dump planet ruled by the Grandmaster, Jeff Goldblum, who specializes in providing gladiatorial contests. The whole scene feels like the color scheme and outgoing nature of “Guardians of the Galaxy” has been injected into the Thor universe (or that Thor has taken a vacation in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” universe for a spell.) This works much better than one would perhaps think. Thor has never been especially funny, but becomes quite useful for initiating and returning jokes in this movie. It helps that Chris Hemsworth is an underrated comic actor and is particularly good at being a dumb blonde hunk (see the recent “Ghostbusters” reboot).

Surrounding Thor in the trash world are other routinely funny characters. Jeff Goldblum, an inspired piece of casting if there ever was, is essentially playing a meme-version of himself. Given that he is technically the bad guy, his weirdly punctual way of stilted speaking deprives any sense of foreboding in the story. He enters Thor in a non-consensual gladiatorial contest. There Thor meets a rock giant named Korg whose accent and style of speaking is reminiscent of the “The Flight of the Conchords.” That is no mistake. He is voiced by a director of that series, Taika Watiti, who also is the director of this movie. Thor also meets the reigning champion, none other than the Incredible Hulk, who has eschewed his Dr. Jekkyl-Bruce Banner persona for a running two years because this garbage planet actually likes the other guy. Thor without his hammer is a bit like Superman consistently surrounded by Kryptonite. It brings him down to earth where Hemsworth comic abilities allow the rest of us to laugh at him. It also helps that they shaved off his pretentious long hair.

The battle scenes in Thor: Ragnarok are spectacular and not so cringe-inducing as most other blockbuster movies. I’ve complained ad infinitum about nameless and countless humans being destroyed in great movie spectacles of violence without anyone in the story particularly caring. This is less of a concern when the characters are gods and cannot actually die or get all that much hurt. The gladiatorial contest between Thor and The Hulk is especially pleasurable.

Given that one-half of the movie is consistently funny and fun to be around, the other half seems to lull in parts. This has got to be the first time that I have written that Cate Blanchett does not inhabit the most interesting part of a movie. Here it is true, but it is mainly because the Thor-Hulk story-line is so entertaining. I got a great kick out of it and look forward to the next Thor movie.

p.s. If Thor is the God of Thunder and he can summon thunderbolts, why would he not be immune to tasers that use electric shocks.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (1/5 Stars)

Last year, I saw writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos’s film “The Lobster” and stated that it was one of the most original romantic comedies I had ever seen. It was the only film I had seen of Mr. Lanthimos, who at that point, had been making movies since the 1990s. After watching “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” I may never see another of his movies again.

The Lobster’s idiosyncrasies, it’s quirky characters, and its weird dialogue had the appearance of making sense because of the absurd fictional world that they inhabited. Having never seen a Lanthimos film, I suppose I just assumed that when he set stories in the real world, he would not expect to people to speak and act in the same unreal way. My assumption was wrong. “The Killing of Sacred Deer” has no place being set in the real world, but there it is. The unreality of what is happening on the screen and the unbelievable way the characters react to it makes it impossible for the viewer to empathize or care about what is occurring in the story. As a drama, it failed dramatically. As a comedy, the only laughs it garnered were the bad kind.

“The Killing of a Sacred Deer” takes its sweet time in getting to the main conceit of the story. As it meanders, you are left to wonder what might be happening. Several interesting story-lines seem possible, slowly the story is developed and you realize that the story-line that has indeed been chosen is one of the stupider ones. I will now give it away. A surgeon, played by Colin Farrell, once negligently caused the death of a man during a surgery. The son of that man, a shifty and sweaty Barry Keoghan, has put a hex on the surgeon’s family. Actually, to say it is a “hex” is doing more explaining than the movie cares to. What happens is that Colin’s family one-by-one slowly become paralyzed, stop eating, and start bleeding out the eyes. This happens to Colin’s son first before happening to his daughter. We do not know how Barry Keoghan is doing this or whether it a unique hex or has been attempted by anyone before. There is literally no attempt to explain it.

I guess that would not matter so much if other things were not missing. After all, many movies are based on otherwise impossible things happening. But the movie is so deadpan toward the situation, and its characters reactions are so absurdly understated, that it seems the movie is making a point of how pathetic  they are as they are confronted with otherworldly horror. Is the situation being played for laughs? People in the theater were indeed laughing when the story called for the kids crawling along the floor using just their elbows. But did Lanthimos want us to find children crawling on the floor because they can’t use their legs anymore funny? Really?

Characters in movies are fictional, yes I know this. But it also says something about a writer/director who seems to be purposefully positioning his characters in ways where it is impossible to empathize with them. What is left is ultimately is a waste of time. After all, if Lanthimos doesn’t care about whether or not the sacred deer is killed, why should we?

Battle of the Sexes (4/5 Stars)

Putting the Show back in Chauvinism

The show was so good it is hard to believe that it was actually true. “The Battle of the Sexes,” a tennis match played in 1973 between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King plays like a professional wrestling match. In one corner is the heel, the ex-champion Bobby Riggs, a boastful, clownish, male chauvinist. In the other corner is Billie Jean King, young, serious, the greatest female tennis player in the country. Bobby believes that he can beat at his age, 55, any woman who has the guts to challenge him. His reasoning: men are better than women. The match became so hyped that it ultimately was played in a football stadium and 50 million people watched it on television. Like professional wrestling, it had a man one could love to hate and a woman everyone wanted to win.

Except that this wasn’t a professional wrestling match. The outcome that would delight the world, good guys win, bad guys lose, was not predetermined. The prize money was a million dollars and Bobby Riggs, a compulsive gambler, had bet $15,000 of his own money on himself. There would be no throwing of the fight and the fact that Bobby had previously soundly beat the next best female tennis player, Margaret Court, in what was termed the Mother’s Day massacre, had put a real suspense onto the outcome of the match. The match was exciting. And in this movie, the feeling is fully captured.

To Billie Jean King, the significance of the match was very serious. She had turned down Bobby several times before Margaret’s defeat, made it essential that she take the match in order to prove that women’s tennis wasn’t a joke. At the time, she was lobbying for equal pay in tournaments between men and women. Her reasoning: the men and women sell the same amount of tickets, why are they paid differently. To Bobby, the significance of the match seems less serious and more of a ploy to be paid more money. Bobby knows that by trolling the women’s lib movement he could generate interest in the match. Whether he actually hates women is an open question, but on a certain level it doesn’t matter. He does not take the women’s lib movement serious. As he comments in one scene: the women don’t deserve to be paid as much as the men because they can’t beat the men in a match-up. In fact, he says, “I’m being paid less to play on the men’s senior circuit than the women are making in their regular circuit. If I can beat the top women, its unfair to me to be paid less than them.”

It strikes me that I’m talking far more about the plot than usual. Well, that speaks to the power of the story. It is a fantastic battle between two very strong characters. Steve Carell is the perfect actor to portray the clownish Bobby Riggs and Emma Stone is perfect as Billie Jean King. In fact, I think this is the fullest character Emma Stone has ever played and is her best performance. Sarah Silverman and Bill Pullman pull their weight in supporting roles.

The movie thankfully pays a lot of time and attention to the match itself. It is well directed by Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Davis (directors of “Little Miss Sunshine”) and written by Simon Beaufoy (“Slumdog Millionaire”). This is a good movie. I really liked it.

Mother! (3/5 Stars)

The last two movies of writer/director Darren Aronofsky, “Noah” and now “Mother!” Present a point of view that is rarely posited. Believers of God generally think of the deity in an absolutely positive light, whether as fully good or at least fully just. Whereas non-believers don’t have an opinion about God (though they may hold a generally negative of organized religion) because they don’t believe that the deity exists to have an opinion about. Darren Aronofsky, at least in his last two films, believes in God, and finds the deity lacking. For example, in “Noah”, God decides to kill almost everybody on Earth. Some characters in that movie were quite articulate as to the unfairness of it all. If there was a such thing, that movie and this new one would be heretical works.

“Mother!” is an extending and ever-developing metaphor of all the crimes ever committed against Women/Nature. I myself did not quite grasp the overall metaphor until about two thirds of the way through and upon reflection noticed I missed many things early on. Then again, I went into this movie blind. Just reading that its a metaphor will likely help you catch on to the biblical parallels earlier. “Mother!” has received a Cinemascore of F which should give a hint as to what an unpleasant experience this movie can be. However, an unpleasant movie does not necessarily a bad movie. “Mother!” is technically proficient, well-acted, and has more things to say in ten minutes than most movies have in their running time. I cannot say I liked “Mother!”, but when I exited the theater I had a feeling that reminded me of the feeling I had when I exited the theater after watching Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York.” It is an intense proceeding.

The movie takes place entirely in a fixer-upper mansion in a picturesque landscape. Here Jennifer Lawrence, doing her best impression of a Renaissance Madonna, works on renovations while her older husband, played by Javier Bardem, tries to get out of a writing block. Nobody actually has names as who they are and what they represent seem to more or less explicitly change over time.

The movie can be broken into three parts: the first is about the neuroses and concerns of a married couple trying to decide when and if to have a child, the second is about fame and what happens to a couple when one of them starts spreading their love in a not exclusive fashion, the third is quite explicitly about God and Mother Nature. In the background, making things complicated and then throwing the whole world into squalor and chaos are the humans. The movie takes a dim view of the humans, and through this dim of view of the humans, places the ultimate blame for the troubles on God, who made them in his image. The only innocent here is Women/Nature. At least that is what I believe this movie is about. Aronofsky does not feel the need to be explanatory. I think that wound in the floor is Original Sin, but there is no way to know for certain. Javier Bardem it should be noted is quite good as God. Not sure how that sort of thing is pulled off, but he does it.

I can’t recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see a movie with anyone else. You are going to have to see this one alone. It’s not a good time. However, it will make you think. It is quite literally a challenging movie. I for one never considered what Mary, mother of Jesus, may have felt about God giving up his only son through martyrdom for our sins. I mean it’s not like God asked Mary for permission or even her opinion on the matter.

Logan Lucky (4/5 Stars)

Those searching for a theme to categorize the career of Director Steven Soderbergh will be left searching. He is a man of seemingly unlimited interests. To take just enough examples to prove my point: his projects have ranged from an epic biopic of Che Gueverra, a remake of a Russian science fiction movie, an action movie built around the physicality of a female MMA wrestler, a no-budget movie set in a doll factory starring non-actors, a remake of a rat pack heist movie with the biggest movie stars in the world, a TV show about a hospital in NYC in the year 1900.

Logan Lucky is no exception to the rule that there are no rules. This movie takes place in present day West Virginia and concerns the Logan family’s heist of the Coca Cola NASCAR speedway. You could say it’s like Ocean’s Eleven because it technically is in the same heist genre, but really the movie are not the same at all. Or to put in another way, they are as different as Las Vegas is to Appalachia.

Logan Lucky is a lot of fun. In particular, you sense the deft hand of an experienced storyteller at work in what Soderbergh chooses to leave out of scenes. How the heist itself works is not really explained fully beforehand, so we experience how it works as the heist progresses. This was probably a good move because the heist, being somewhat realistic, is also not super complicated (as opposed to say Ocean’s Eleven). It does succeed in passing the Heist Test, a test I’m making up now (although it probably already exists somewhere).

The Heist Test consists merely of watching the movie and spotting some obvious clue that the authorities have been shown in the movie that should tip them off to the perpetrators. An example of a movie that fails the Heist Test is Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.” In that movie, the robbers make all their hostages shed their clothes, put on the same uniform as the robbers, and they all walk out the front door. The authorities could have easily just had all the hostages put their clothes back on. The people without any clothes to put back on are the robbers. Heist solved. The authorities in “Inside Man” don’t do this thus that movie fails the Heist test.

I think Logan Lucky passes the Heist Test. It does this in a nifty way by transforming the Heist of a Speedway more into an insurance scam. That is it takes away anyone’s motive for solving the heist. That sort of is a spoiler but isn’t really.

Logan Lucky stars Channing Tatum as Jimmy Logan, mastermind, Adam Driver as Clyde Logan, his sibling and sidekick in the scheme, and Daniel Craig as Joe Bang, an incarcerated bank vault specialist. They all sport Appalachian accents. Weirdly this seems the suit the Brit the best. Then there is Seth MacFarlane who plays a racecar sponsor named Max Chilblain. I couldn’t tell at all where his accent hailed from.

Logan Lucky exploits the regular fun from its Appalachian characters and setting while undercutting the stereotypes sometimes in the same line of a scene. For one particular good instance, Joe Bang makes what can best be described as a white trash bomb out of bleach and gummy bears, but then successfully explains it using chemistry equations. I had a good time watching Logan Lucky. It’s a good addition to the Pretty Good Soderbergh shelf.

Dunkirk (4/5 Stars)

 “Dunkirk” recreates of an early event in World War II when the German blitzkrieg flanked and encircled the entire British army at the beaches of Dunkirk while the German Luftwaffe bombed them from above and German U-Boats terrorized the British channel.

It is entirely possible that the large majority of the British army, around 400,000 men, may have died on that beach. The British navy was not sending the bulk of their destroyers to evacuate the men because of the superiority of the German air force and submarine fleet. The last and only hope was to draft all the “little ships” of the England, civilian boats, to cross the channel and pick up the boys. As a retreat it was so successful it became the stuff of legend. Only 40,000 men were expected to live. The British with the help of the civilian effort rescued ten times that amount and a good amount of the French army too.

Writer and Director Christopher Nolan treats the subject matter with solemnity and reverence. Individual stories are sacrificed to the events as a whole. (In fact, I can’t remember most of the names of the characters.) There is no back-story and no locations that are not on Dunkirk, therefore no characters that aren’t on-the-ground soldiers. This minimalism suits the sense of isolation and the impending doom felt by the men on the beach.

What is innovative is the structure of the story. Here, again, Director Nolan (Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar) engages his forte. The movie is divided into three parts and seamlessly switches between the three. The first is the Mole (french word for pier thing on the beach) and takes place over a week and covers the entire week that the evacuation took place in. The second is the Sea and takes place over a single day that the little ships were involved in the evacuation. The third is the Air and takes place over a single hour that the British Air Force provided a cover mission for the evacuation. The Air’s hour takes place during the Sea’s day which takes place during the Mole’s week. It is not necessarily intuitive that these stories could seamlessly move back and forth between each other, but Nolan once again proves that he knows how to clearly tell a seemingly convoluted story. I was not particularly confused as to what was happening when.

And it makes sense story-wise. If Nolan had told the story straight chronologically, the second and especially the third story-line would have been sandwiched unfairly near the end, thereby reducing the historical importance of the sea and air efforts. This way, they are all given equal time (even though the their times are unequal) and the movie has this interesting relativistic effect. The faster the characters move, the slower time seems to move for them, and an hour in a British Spitfire roaring across the channel equals the time spent by a man walking on the ground.

Most of the actors, though talented like Tom Hardy (airplane) and Cillian Murphy (ground), could have been replaced because of the deliberate motive of the movie to have the scenario overpower any one individual story. There is one exception and that is the civilian captain of one of the little ships, played by Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies). The nobility of the man shines through and gives incarnate form to the humble and collective spirit of Dunkirk that became the stuff of legend. His interactions with a shell-shocked soldier (Cillian Murphy) provide the heart of the movie. “There’s no turning back from this, son,” he states and there is a power in the understated yet unwavering purpose behind his intonations. Keep Calm and Carry On indeed.

The Little Hours (4/5 Stars)

Ostensibly “The Little Hours” is based on “The Decameron” by Giovanni Boccaccio. This 14^th century work concerned a group of ten women who relocated to the country to wait out the bubonic plague. To entertain themselves, they each tell a story. There is only one rule: don't make it depressing like the plague. This movie is more likely to have been inspired by one of the short stories as opposed to actually adapted from it. I don’t know much about the actual short story except that it involved a convent of horny nuns and their adventures with the new gardener. That more or less happens in “The Little Hours,” but there is plenty here that is most likely anachronistic. Then again, there is also plenty here that isn’t anachronistic. And more than anything, the choices that Writer/Director Jeff Baena makes as to what to stay historically faithful to and what to not care too much about changing are what makes “The Little Hours” a superior movie and yes, very funny.

What stays the same is the general context of 14^th century Italy, specifically the Tuscan countryside where the convent is located. I know something about the context because of recently reading Will Durant’s “The Story of Civilization, Volume 5: The Renaissance”. (I may have been the only one  in the theater keenly aware of the historical context of one character’s paranoid obsession with Guelfs.) The characters, being of 14^th century Italy, and unaware of a brighter future with far more freedom, respond to their situations in historically correct ways. One particular nun, when told by her visiting father that the family’s money is tight and she probably won’t get a promised dowry (and thus dashing her hopes of someday leaving the convent to marry), is disappointed but does not get angry or disobedient. Although such a response would be unheard of today (just like it would be unheard of for any daughter to be forced into a convent for monetary reasons in the first place), it is this type of detail that provides the basis of catharsis later on in the story. This story, after all, is about life finding its way through the strictures of not just physical but psychological repression. That repression, though outdated, must remain heavy and the characters must believe in it for the movie to truly succeed. When successfully providing the basis for the reality of the movie, it provides high stakes for certain reveals that in this day and age nobody would care about. Those high stakes seen through a modern consciousness are quite funny. At the height of one particular comedic moment, I heard a sizable gasp in the audience (and onscreen) when one character accuses another character of being a Jew. (Gasp!)

What is changed is plenty. For one thing, although this is Italy, there are no accents and there is noone speaks like Shakespeare. The script is tailored not to the prose of “The Decameron” but to the comedic attributes of its very good cast of talented comedians. In supporting roles are the men. John C. Reilly plays a good-hearted pastor with a weakness for wine. Fred Armisen plays a traveling bishop who functions like a spiritual auditor (more in an accountant way than an inquisitor way). Nick Offerman plays the previously mentioned monarch obsessed with Guelfs. In the main roles are three of the most talented young female comedians around. First is Alison Brie (“Community”) the aforementioned girl who wants to leave the convent and marry but whose family decides is not worth the dowry. Next is Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation”) whose dead-pan bluntness and sullen rebelliousness makes her the perfect candidate for witchcraft. Finally is a new-comer (at least to me), one Kate Micucci, who is a comedic revelation. If the convent plays a little like high school with Alison as the rich girl and Aubrey as the goth girl, Kate is the unformed slightly nerdy girl that just wants to fit in with the rest of them. Although the characters are of the 14th century, the movie takes a purely modern and secular view of certain taboos (homosexuality, celibacy, drug-use, etc.). For example, witchcraft is not so much about being evil as it is about dancing naked in the woods on drugs. The witches are not unlike modern hippies.

Surrounded by all these colorful characters is Dave Franco, the humble gardener whose presence in the convent excites all of the repressed nuns. Dave wisely plays the straight man to the craziness abounding around him and never really goes for the laughs himself. That’s fine, because the story is driven by the women in it, and it is their choices as it pertains to the gardener (some of which can be decidedly categorized as sexual harassment) that reveal each of their well-rounded characters.

A movie like “The Little Hours” could not have been made before the digital revolution in movies. It is way too niche and obviously would be very difficult to market in any mass market type of way. If however you stumble upon it, give it a shot. I thought it was hilarious.

The Beguiled (4/5 Stars)

In the midst of the American Civil War, on an abandoned Southern plantation, there remains a girls school, seemingly marooned from the world. It is headed by Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) and employs one teacher named Edwina (Kirsten Dunst). She teaches five girls ranging from eight years old to an almost adult named Alicia (Elle Fanning). One day the youngest girl finds an injured Union soldier on the road named Corporal McBurney (Colin Farrell). He is taken into the plantation where the women go about nursing him back to health.

According to the dictionary, to beguile means to “charm or enchant (someone), sometimes in a deceptive way.” The titular “Beguiled” in this movie is perhaps everybody in it. It is a case study in very polite sexual tension. It is not just that Colin Farrell is handsome, and he is, or that the house is full of hospitable southern women who are quite beautiful, and they are, it is that there are several dynamics in between all the characters playing at once. The union soldier is injured so he must rely on the women. But the women are trained by the culture and the time period to acquiesce to the man. But the number of women in the house far outnumber the man. But the women are competing amongst themselves for the man’s attention.

It is a credit to the writing and direction of this movie, that the above does not drown itself in melodrama. Instead through very fine attention to detail and pointed understatement the situation hovers between absurdity and suspense. There is something funny about the women offering the man a home-cooked meal (“would you like some pie, corporal? It’s my special recipe.”) at a dinner they have all dressed too much up at, and also something sinister about it given that any actual sexuality would have drastic consequences. The consequences again are on several levels: The impropriety of such a lady-like institution harboring any such sensual situation, the jealous competition between the ladies themselves, and then there is the war waging outside that technically makes the man and all the women sworn enemies.

The Director is Sofia Coppola, who based her screenplay off a previous movie of the same title. (I bet this remake is much better.) Ms. Coppola perhaps more than anybody in the business is a good argument for nepotism. The thing is that, and if you ever watch interviews with Ms. Coppola perhaps you would agree with me, Ms. Coppola doesn’t really come off, forgive me, as a particularly interesting person. She comes off strikingly competent, yes, but way too literal to be engaging. For those who generally enjoy the insight of a director's interview, Ms. Coppola has a way of making it seem like there is less to the movie than meets the eye. Of course, this shouldn’t be held against her because what counts is the movie and not her personality, and she does make good movies. I simply find it hard to believe that she could have risen through the ranks without her last name because its hard to believe she could ever successfully pitch a movie.

But whatever the reason she gets to make movies, it is a good thing that she does. Most directors aren’t like Sofia Coppola and her movies in turn are not like most. Just as nobody but Coppola would imagine a biopic about Marie Antionette without a beheading, here nobody would have had the follow-through to base a movie for such a sustained period of time on tiny movements, glances, and phrases that may or may not mean what they say they mean. Counter-intuitively, “The Beguiled” may be a movie you should see in a theater because it is small. If you saw it on Netflix, you might miss a good portion of what is happening.

When the movie finally does get dramatic it is very satisfying. The ensemble is perfectly cast. In particular, Nicole Kidman, as the head-mistress, and Elle Fanning, as a really bored girl, do well in their roles. Given the general dearth of good roles for women, I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie got multiple Oscar nominations for acting. And Colin Farrell again made me regret ever thinking he was bad actor. I take it back. I really like that guy.