Skating By (I, Tonya, 2017)

I will be honest…all I really remember about the Nancy Kerrigan story is that the talented skater and Olympic Hopeful was brutally assaulted, leaving her with a broken knee. What followed was pretty insane. It became apparent that her attack was coordinated by people related to her competition…Tonya Harding. Harding, her husband, her bodyguard and two other individuals apparently colluded to commit the crime.

I, Tonya tells the story in a darkly comic fashion. Showing Hardings tough childhood, the film frames Tonya as a victim who struggles to break free. The early film is actually quite heartbreaking as young Tonya, a talented skater at age four, manages to get the attention of a reluctant trainer. Her mother is cruel and absolutely horrific in her push for her daughter to succeed. The is a gut wrenching moment as her father drives away and Tonya is tearfully begging him to take her with him (McKenna Grace is wonderfully touching in her performance. You cannot help but feel broken for her).

She meets Jeff Galooley at age fifteen and begins a whirlwind remance that eventually becomes abusive. But Jeff is absolutely certain that he needs to be with her, no matter how often she walks out.

Nancy Kerrigan plays only a small role, as the film is mainly focused on Harding’s life and the controversy on her end.

The film is based heavily on interviews with Harding, Jeff, there body guard Shawn and LaVona (Tonya’s mother). The film has the framing device of on camera interviews with the primary players. This allows for a unique narration. We see Jeff hitting Tonya (the portrayal of the domestic violence is suitably unnerving) and Jeff interjects his denial of the events. Tonya pauses the film to quickly state that Kerrigan was no angel.

The performances here are top notch. Both Margot Robbie and Sebastian Stan have a good chemistry that convinces the audience both of their initial connection and the dissolution of the relationship. And Allison Janney as LaVona is inspired. You cannot help but despise her.

The makeup and costuming here is impressive. Janney is almost unrecognizable (only her voice made me recognize her). For much of the movie, both Robbie and Stan look positively average. Considering these are two very attractive people, the makeup people deserve kudos.

Now to the part of the film that might be troubling for many. Some take issue with the notion of “reforming a monster”. Tonya was part of a despicable crime. And the notion of the film rehabilitating her image did not sit well with people.

And, in a way, this is not entirely inaccurate. If the film is truthful? Harding was not in on the crime. She was only loosely associated. Mainly, she appears to maybe have only found out about her husband and bodyguards involvement after the fact. The film also portrays Jeff as having tried to put a stop to the plan. He had hoped to send letters with threats to Kerrigan…psychological warfare. In the film, when he finds out what Shawn had done, he is enraged that they went so far.

Does it rehabilitate Harding’s image? Does it make her seem a victim of cruel circumstances that shaped her into a tough person who got a raw deal? Yeah, I guess it does. But if the information in the film is accurate at all? Maybe she deserves it.

June 4, 2018 0

Look Ma! A Sequel! (Deadpool 2, 2018)

Okay….before I write up this review…give me a moment to go check out Twitter to find out how I should really feel about Deadpool.

Okay. Well… let us try this as spoiler free as possible. First, I cannot believe they killed Professor X twice in the film.

Oops. Boy off to a bad start. Let’s try this again. Deadpool 2 is a sequel to a film from 2016 that was called Deadpool. It featured a bunch of characters from a comic book, also called Deadpool. It was pretty well received and now we have this movie. In this movie, some characters from the first film show up again, including Deadpool. Some new characters also show up. There are fights, people die, there is swearing and lots of Ryan Reynolds. It is a sequel to a movie.

What? You want more?

Fine.

So, Deadpool would have been a perfectly fine film to leave as a one off. But apparently movie studios like money. Part of what made the first film work for so many is it had a rather irreverent approach to Super Hero films. Wade Wilson is a sarcastic mercenary who, in the first film was subjected to tests that left him severely scarred, but unable to die. He can recover from most any wound. That film centered around his relationship to Vanessa. In this film, we find his life bordering on blissful, until one of his contracts results in tragedy.

Deadpool finds himself, somewhat unwillingly, into trying to save a mutant kid from the time traveling Mutant Cable. Things go haywire and violent stuff happens.

While the main theme of family does not always quite come together, the film is still ambitious in how it tries to give a character who cracks jokes to the theater audience an emotional through line. Sometimes it works and other times not so much.

Where the film works best is it’s humor. The jokes come at a pretty fast pace, but Reynolds has a certain charm that allows for most of the jokes to land. There is an ongoing bit where Deadpool and new teammate Domino debate if “being lucky” is a real super power or even remotely cinematic. But the filmmakers have a lot of fun with Domino’s amazing luck.

The film managed to surprise me repeatedly. I just had certain expectations due to “Comic Book Movie” that managed to surprise and entertain me. Brolin’s Cable is played straight which works very well against Reynold’s rapid fire motor mouth. I found Domino to be a blast in this film. My one complaint is that I wish we got more Teenage Negasonic Warhead in this film, as she was such a highlight of the first film.

So, the first film was a bit stronger in how tightly it kept to the story, but honestly, I found myself (and the audience I was with) laughing throughout the film. I enjoyed this one, and think in some areas, they may have even made some improvements.

May 18, 2018 0

Look Out In the Snow! (Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell, 2018)

Burt Gummer is back in the desolate town of Perfection. He is having tax problems, so when he is contacted by the daughter of Val and Rhonda (Kevin Bacon and Finn Carter’s characters from the first film) because their remote Alaskan research base is under Graboid attack, he and his Son Travis run off.

It all has everyone perplexed, as there seems to be no explanation for the Graboids to be so far north. Gummer starts to piece it all together when they discover a nearby Area 51 style base. But the Graboids start gobbling people up and the two groups have to team up to try and survive.

I have noted in the past I found it kind of interesting how the films migrated across time to focus on survivalist Burt Gummer as the hero. The fifth film introduced his previously unknown son Travis and beefed up the graboids in size and appearance. They also became more agile.

Gross seems to enjoy the role, though it may simply be that at this point he has the core of the character down. Kennedy’s Travis can grate on the nerves a bit, but there are several like-able characters, making it easy to avoid just rooting for the graboids to eat everyone.

The move in the fifth film to make more use of digital graboids (though, there are still practical monsters for some scenes) is less jarring than it could be. For the most part, the digital monster look pretty decent.

As someone who enjoys the Tremors series, I found this to be a passable, even fun sequel.

May 3, 2018 0

Obligatory Bare Naked Ladies One Week Song Reference (The Week Of, 2018)

Kenny Lustig is a lower middle class Jewish dad whose daughter is engaged to the son of rich surgeon (and black) Kirby Cordice. The week before the wedding, Kenny is trying to set everything up to go perfectly. Shockingly in a story like this…that is not happening.

There is certainly a potentially entertaining movie in the story. But the weight of the cliches and the casting brings to much drag. Kenny has big ideas, but is trying to pull them off on a budget and hide just how tight money is. He is constantly fighting with his wife, his family is overbearing but he and his daughter have a special bond. Is the massive fighting with his wife (played by Rachel Dratch) something that needs resolution? I don’t know…maybe? It is almost more like “This is an Adam Sandler movie, he needs another person to have shouting matches with”.

Rock’s Cordice has no apparent relationship to his ex-wife or his kids. He hates her new man, and just threw money at the kids. But the movie never does a good job of showing this relationship. But at the end, we are supposed to accept how much he has grown. But from where???

We don’t really get much of a sense of any of the relationships. A lot of the running gags feel like the film was originally envisioned as a writer pitch to Wes Anderson. The quirky friend who offers to sleep with guys for her best friend’s sake, another friend who throws herself at the weird neighbor kid who has been obsessed Sandler’s daughter for years…they are all “quirky”…but here it just feels like a weird clash.

And the biggest problem is the casting. Sandler and Rock are just not the right guys for these roles. They do not bring any real personality or life to their characters. Kirby and Kenny are ill defined characters, relying on cliches…and neither actor does anything to make these characters feel like they are more than those cliches.

Heck, they don’t even really make use of the cliches that might give them some solid awkward comedy. The only gag we really get from the Black and Jewish thing is one that…well, makes Kenny look pretty bad. He sees two black guys walking by the house and invites the (rather confused) two in because he assumes they are members of Kirby’s family.

Nothing really seems able to save The Week Of from drowning in it’s own lack of creativity.

May 2, 2018 0

It Is All In Your Head (I Feel Pretty, 2018)

So, remember that movie Shallow Hal? Renee Bennett is an average girl in an average life…who always always wished to be as beautiful as the models on magazines who advertise for her employer high end makeup producer Lily LeClaire. One day at a Soul Cycle Session she gets a hit to the head and awakens to find she is suddenly one of the most beautiful women she has ever seen. Perfect body and face…the hitch is…only she can see this. Completely unaware that she looks the same as before to everyone else, she proceeds to walk through her life believing she is physically a new person.

This is, of course, where most of the humor is mined. As Renee tries to convince her friends she really is still Renee, not some strange woman they have never met, her friends react totally confused recognizing the same woman they have always known.

Renee gets a lot of confused looks as she responds to advances and compliments never made. She talks about being able to eat whatever she wants and “still look like this”, believing the stunned and incredulous looks are reactions of agreement. Because she simply believes she is beautiful.

Unknown to her, this confidence has a powerful impact on the perceptions of those around her. When she hits on Ethan believing he has made the first move, he finds himself confounded and totally taken with Renee. And even her dream hunk, the brother of her boss, finds himself drawn to the cocky and self assured Renee.

But as she starts to succeed in ways she believes are only due to her newfound beauty, it starts to strain her friendships. Because, when it comes down to it, Renee has bought into the notion that it is all about the exterior package. And so she starts to try and treat her friends as a product to be up-sold to other people.

The film avoids any cliched villains. In fact their are no villains. When we are first introduced to Avery LeClaire, she seems to be a vapid elitist. The elitist part is true, she struggles to connect with her grandmother’s desired discount product. But she turns out to have been a well educated young women who has long struggled to be taken seriously, judged on her exteriors. Same with the beautiful young model Renee idolizes as being problem free…the film goes out of its way, in fact, to acknowledge that regardless of how you look, women are in this together.

Of course, Hollywood’s “it’s what is inside that counts” anthems are often well place but can feel a little empty. Remember how I mentioned Shallow Hal? In that film, Hal is a guy obsessed with physical beauty. A chance encounter with a self help guru leaves Hal hypnotized so that he sees the inner beauty of a person. So, he sees each woman he meets in an idealized light. But then, each female character Hal meets is a model later in makeup to make her look less pretty. Now, that film has it’s own positive and negative issues (typical with the early Farrelly Brothers material). But Hollywood is pretty looks obsessed. We humans favor beauty and Hollywood is more than happy to define it and feed it to us.

I Feel Pretty Tries to keep things grounded, and one of the smart things the film does is that we never actually see Renee’s idealized form. We don’t know what she is actually seeing. We see Amy Schumer the whole time.

The biggest problem the movie has is length. It just drags at times. And most of the information in those scenes is communicated better elsewhere in the film. But largely, I enjoyed I Feel Pretty. It is largely funny, has it’s heart in the (mostly) right place and tries hard to leave it’s audience with a sense that life is a lot better if you don’t worry that your package is not good enough.

April 30, 2018 0

Comedy Is Like Marriage (The Honeymoon Stand Up Special, 2018)

A good standup can give a real cathartic laugh or even challenge your perceptions through humor. While I was familar with Natasha Legerro through various appearances on Comedy Central…I really only know Moshe Kasher from some appearances on the late @Midnight. I knew that with Legerro I would be getting some raunchy jokes mixed with some pushing the limits of polite conversation. I did not know what to really expect from Kasher. Other than, for some reason, I always thought he was a gay guy. And apparently (in spite of a joke about jerking off to gay porn at the fertility clinic) he is not. He and Leggero are married and have a child (they were still in the expecting stage at the time)…hence the title of the Honeymoon Stand Up Special.

Split into three parts, the special starts out with Leggero’s set. Leggero is one of those comics who kind of plays into “being a girl comic” but quickly makes it clear she can be raunchy and push back against boundaries. When the audience cheers for her being pregnant, she warns them she is still within the potential area of abortion.

The whole comedy of discomfort can be a difficult tight rope. Sometimes you can reap great reward from making your audience squirm and laugh. Usually this comes in the form of uncomfortable truths and “I cannot believe the comic went there”. But in some cases, the joke is dying a slow death. Unfortunately, Leggero’s set suffers from this a couple times. She can definitely elicit laughs, but an offhanded joke about the Catholic Church’s child abuse scandal would have worked if it did not get drawn out into a cringe worthy discussion about how the altar boys are “asking for it”. On the other hand…men will likely find it uncomfortable just how many women have tales of random men masturbating in public in front of them. We are awful.

Part two is Kasher’s stand-up. Kasher actually ratchets up the raunchiness by focusing heavily on masturbation. And actually, some of this is pretty funny, as he talks about how his “progressive militant feminist” single mom took him to a sex shop at thirteen to allow him to buy porn…but since she was a feminist and believed porn to be inherently misogynistic…he was only allowed to buy from a selection of text based lesbian erotica. But like Leggero’s set, Kasher can take a funny joke and stretch it past the point of laughter.

So, you are probably thinking…well, Thom clearly hated this special. And this is not true. I found both sets to be pretty hit or miss. I laughed at some jokes…but not enough to feel like I fully had fun.

But then came the third part. In part three, Leggero and Kasher share the stage. They discuss her conversion to Judaism (noting that it is way harder to become a Jew than a Christian). They then start to bring couples up on stage. Natasha and Moshe have a good chemistry as a team. They play off each other in a way that has a sweet tension. And when they bring up couples to question them about their relationships, the special takes off. I really enjoyed part three. The banter between Leggero, Kasher and the couples is a whole lot of fun. Part three absolutely shines.

And so there you have it. I highly recommend Part three of the Honeymoon Stand Up Special.

April 21, 2018 0

Sick of Waiting for the World to End (Dudes, 1987)

Grant, Biscuit and Milo are three young punk rockers who decide to drive cross country to California. But on the way, a gang robs them and kills Milo. When the police blow them off, Grant is determined to get revenge on the gang.

Along the way, Grant meets a young woman who provides he and Biscuit with new outfits and a car.

Dudes has never quite been able to get outside it’s cult movie status, in large part because it is a amalgam of genres.

The punk rock trio are fish out of water, and yet, the film follows the conventions of the western. To boot there is the supernatural element suggesting Milo and Biscuit are being helped by the long dead spirits of a cowboy and a Native American tribe slaughters by the gang leader. Is he re-incarnated? Is he a great grandson? Is it just a drug induced dream?

The tale takes Grant and Biscuit from nihilism to life with a purpose. Grant and Biscuit are both likable young guys. And you really have got to try hard to not like Catherine Mary Stewart.

Dudes is a fun adventure with a group of surprisingly endearing characters.

March 24, 2018 0

To the Victor Go the Spoils (Victor Crawley, 2017)

Back in 2006, Adam Green made a splash within the horror genre with a throwback to 80’s slasher films called Hatchet. The story of a group of folks on a Louisiana swamp tour who run afoul of the local legend Victor Crawley.

The legend went that the poor young deformed Victor lived with his father. One night a group of kids tried to scare Victor, only to set the house on fire. While trying to save Victor, his father accidentally kills him with an axe. Years later, after a series of deaths, that part of the swamp was declared unfit to visit. The tour group discover that Victor is more than a legend…he is an “unkillable” murder machine.

The first hatchet got a positive enough response for Green to make two sequels, which garnered a cult fanbase. And really, it is a fun franchise. The violence is far to ridiculous to be judged seriously. Green filled the films with horror royalty like Robert Englund and Tony Todd. The films relied on traditional practical effects and buckets of blood. Like, an absurd amount. Green always approached the films with a sense of humor. And using the most famous Jason, Kane Hodder, he managed to create a pretty memorable bad guy. The first film also had a really memorable teaser trailer:

Green ended the franchise with Hatchet 3 in 2013. And Victor Crawley was laid to rest. Late last year, fans were invited to an anniversary showing of Hatchet. Except, when Adam Green stepped before the audience, he informed them that instead, they were about to watch a brand new fourth film in the franchise, simply titled Victor Crawley.

The film has a bit of a shaky start with a brief flashback of a couple who meet a terrible fate. The film picks up with Andrew (Parry Shen), the lone survivor of the third film who has written a book about his experience with Crawley. Chloe, an aspiring horror director is hoping to get Andrew to join her and her film crew (well, her boyfriend and friend) in making a film about his meeting with Crawley. Meanwhile, he is talked into joining a television crew for an interview in the old Crawley stomping grounds.

Chloe and her friends are trying to figure out the voodoo incantation that made Crawley into the terrible monster he became by looking it up on YouTube. When they are distracted by the sound of a plane crash, they forget the phone and the incantation plays over and over. As to be expected, the survivors of the crash and the filmmakers must try and survive the night with Crawley.

Green tries something a bit different hear. In prior films, the characters roam the swamp, this time around they stay inside the wrecked plane most of the film as Victor tries to draw them out to creatively murder them.

Like the previous films, this one relies on outrageous practical effect gags and copious amounts of fake blood splashed everywhere. The humor of the films is still there, with Parry Shen (who has appeared in all four films as three different characters), Laura Ortiz and Dave Sheridan are all quite entertaining and Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose provides some good laughs as Andrew’s brash and loud agent. And Kane Hodder returns to play Victor Crawley once more, giving the series a pleasant consistency with it’s villain.

Victor Crawley is not reinventing slashers, but it is a pretty fun ride with a sense of humor about itself.

The Blu-Ray contains a couple commentaries and a behind the scenes featurette. There is also a nice little interview with Green where he opens up about why he returned to a franchise he thought he was done with. Green talks about a serious bout of depression (brought on by the death of a close friend, his marriage ending and his TV being canceled when the network was shut down by a merger) and how George Romero helped point the way out of his spiral.

If you like the Hatchet franchise, I doubt you will be disappointed by Victor Crowley. And if you are a fan of over the top 80’s slashers, you should check out the film (if you are not already familiar with the franchise).

February 9, 2018 0

When It All Goes Wrong (Free Fire, 2016)

Ord and Justine have brokered a black market arms deal with Chris and Frank. Just as the deal seems done, a beef between two of their henchmen breaks out that results in a shootout. An hour long shootout. And then things get bad.

I am not joking…a solid hour of the film is the shoot out. First we see it divided between the two groups, but then it takes a twist bringing them together, only to throw everyone into “every man for himself” insanity.

Free Fire is playing with a tongue in cheek attitude and a seventies low budget action feel. The opening credits have a grindhouse movie feel. You also see this in the clothing styles and hair.

And the lighting aims to give a feeling of grit. In fact, I am a little surprised they did not add an extra bit of “film grain” for an authentic aged movie look.

The film kind of stumbles in it’s tone. It is going for “action Comedy”, but the long and bloody shootout feels to serious for the lighter dialog. Which makes the most violent and comedic scene (as the two underlings that caused the shootout to begin a man to man fight to the death set to a John Denver song) almost feels out of place.

Free Fire also starts to just get tedious as it goes on, because one long fire fight just starts to wear thin after awhile. The high point is the cast. Especially especially Sharlto Copely and Armie Hammer. Cillian Murphy is dependable, though Brie Larson feels wasted as her character seems to lack much personality.

While the trailer seemed promising as a wild and crazy action comedy, the film never finds firm footing in the comedy camp, as the comedy usually gives away to extended action. But the action lacks a lot of humor. And one of the most important things in action comedies is that the action and comedy intersect.

January 26, 2018 0

Get Arnold (Killing Gunther, 2017)

SNL Alumni Taran Killam wrote and directed this entry into the fake documentary genre. Killam plays Blake, a mid-level hitman who aspires to prove himself by taking out the infamous Gunther. Gunther is the hitman all other hitmen both admire and fear.

Blake believes he will cement his own status as a legend if he can kill Gunther. For help, he assembles a team of assassins and starts setting traps for Gunther. He has hired a documentary crew to follow he and his league of assassins. Of course, it becomes increasingly clear that these assassins are ill equipped for taking on Gunther and they start to make fatal errors.

As a comedy, the characters to to be made with quirkiness in mind. There are scenes where Blake gets frustrated by a barrage of questions from his tech guy, because they are interrupting his dramatic monologue. Bobby Moynahan plays the excited Donnie, whose gimmick is explosives. I would say that Aaron Yoo’s Yong is the most interesting assassin, as his gimmick is poisons. This actually leads to some comical situations where he finds himself largely ineffective in the mission.

But the film has one big problem. Who do you see on the posters? Whose name features most prominently in both the posters featured in this review? Arnold Schwarzeneggar. And boy, when he shows up? The film starts getting more fun. Know when he shows up? About the last twenty minutes of the film.

Fans of Schwarzeneggar will get impatient waiting for him to appear, and he shows up to late to save the film from the mediocrity that proceeds it. Killing Gunther is not terrible…but it just is not as entertaining as it could be in it’s road to the exciting stuff at the end.

January 17, 2018 0