The Lion King

It is still the “Summer of Disney” at movie theaters everywhere, and we’re seeing our share of new or re-imagined Disney stories. When considering why they seem so intent on remaking old classics, often morphing from animation to either 3D or live action, I considered an event in my own life. Skip the next five (red) paragraphs if you don’t care to read my thought provoking analogy.

In high school I was the quiet kid in the back of the classroom who dreaded being called on - a virtually unknown student even by year’s end. As such, during my senior year English class following a segment on Shakespeare, we were given the challenge of a final project on any topic the Bard leveraged in the plays we studied. We could act out a scene – eee gads! – write and read a poem to the class – yikes!, write a paper or make a movie. Wait, what?

I chose to make a movie on the topic of “death,” since it factors prominently in Romeo and Juliet, and, well, just about any of Shakespeare’s works. My father died the year before, so it was morbidly therapeutic. Alas, poor Yorick, I knew some stuff about the topic first hand. I’ll skip the production and scheduling details of my filmmaking debut, and cut to the showing of my masterwork on the last day of high school. Keep in mind this was 1972. I used a Super 8 movie camera and an audiocassette recorder to get the job done. Mine was the last project shared that day, and we very nearly ran out of time with no next class for carryover. I was stressed, having worked for weeks with a manual film splicer, adjusting timing. Frantically working to thread the film into a clunky Bell & Howell projector I lugged to school on the bus, queuing the tape player with a poor quality external speaker for my audio track, I nodded to the teacher to shut off the lights.

Four minutes later, the short film ended to applause just as the bell rang on my final English class of my final semester. The teacher approached me, swimming upstream toward the back of the class amid the excited chaos of classmates chattering about summer vacation, just hours away. They said their goodbyes to the teacher, who was beaming.

“I can’t give you any better than an A Plus,” he apologized. I was grateful he hadn’t asked me for my name. He was at a loss for words, but those he spoke were effusive. So this point of recounting this fond memory is, as technologies rapidly changed through the years I periodically considered making the movie again with modern editing methods. But ultimately it was an entirely worthless collage of deathly images that really had no audience outside of 7^thperiod English.

But the people at Disney think back too, and designers no doubt get really jazzed about re-creating classics such as the originally hand-drawn Lion King using 3D editing tools like the complex and expensive Maya software used for the 2019 reincarnation just released.

Director Jon Favreau really knows his stuff, which is kind of an obvious statement, but he learned a lot from making The Jungle Book, and freely admits that it was a learning experience that taught him about optimizing different “lighting” angles within a virtual environment on things like – well, Lion fur.

If you grew up with the 1994 version of The Lion King, or watched your kids grow up with it, you no doubt have fond memories of the story, its lessons, the clever animated characters that act it out, and the academy award winning music written by Elton John and Tim Rice.

The 2019 version of The Lion King is not live action, but you’ll swear it’s real. Computer animation has become so photo-realistic, beginning-to-end, that you forget to marvel at the texture and movement of muscles beneath fur and feathers. Water rippling, splashing and falling is no longer a one-off showcase of a multimedia designer’s best effort – the whole film is a showcase. There are no doubt shortcuts used to capture and template physical characteristics and movements of the many animals in The Lion King. After all, this is the age of digital image libraries. But instead of using the software to have the animals do things they can’t do in nature, the goal here was to have them perform in the most lifelike manner possible. And there are so many animals – you know the scene where they gather around Pride Rock to view baby Simba as he’s held up by Rafiki for all to see? There is scene after scene where so much is going on, layer upon layer in a Noah’s Ark of African species, bowing and trumpeting to welcome the future king, that you feel the need to watch it again and again.

James Earl Jones returns (his voice) as Mufasa, the only carryover from twenty-five years ago. As is usual with Disney, all the latest pop stars and personalities of the moment are lined up behind the characters. I honestly wish they wouldn’t do that. Does Beyonce have to be in everything? And I found it distracting to have Seth Rogan show up yet again with his Pumbaa voice. But then, he is the human embodiment of a warthog, so you can’t fault Disney entirely. But some of the best voices are often those you don’t recognize. Still, in Disney's defense, many years from now, the stars will be forgotten but the voices will live on, much like Edward Everett Horton (Fractured Fairy Tales), Paul Frees (Bullwinkle characters) and Daws Butler (Yogi Bear and others.)

The story is familiar and the music was not tampered with – in fact it has been produced with more conventional orchestration when compared with the original, more synthetic instruments. And one fun tribute came when Timon and Pumbaa began to launch into the Beauty and the Beast song, “Be Our Guest,” which was promptly cut short. It’s a nice little Disney-within-Disney nod.

The original animated film was rated G. This time around, the rating has been upped to PG, no doubt due to the intensity of animal fights and killing, though blood was nowhere to be seen. In fact, some of the major conflicts, especially on a cliff against a background of raging fire are so intense and the hyenas are so numerous and sinister I’d be reluctant to take a very small child to see this.  

The Lion King (2019) runs 1 hour 58 minutes and is rated PG.

Shoud I see this movie?  

Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw

Signing up for the Regal Unlimited movie pass has resulted in our first questionable movie choice using this method. This film was not at the top of our list, but was showing at a suitable time and was more appealing to our visiting thirty year old son than Toy Story 4 or Aladdin.

I have not seen any of the Fast and Furious films, which have apparently spawned a franchise that includes films, soundtracks, video games, a TV series, merchandise and theme park attractions. It has become the tenth largest grossing film franchise and is Universal’s hottest property. And again, I’ve never seen a single movie. I feel negligent.

Because of this, I feel compelled to answer a few questions before reviewing the film:

1.    How many films are there in this franchise and what are they called?

2.    Where is Samoa, location of the final battle in the film?

3.    What universities have Badass curricula?

4.    When did “The Rock” get involved?

5.    What happened to Paul Walker?

Question 1: This is straightforward, given a fast and furious trip to Wikipedia. Here are the nine films in the franchise, ten counting Hobbs and Shaw, which is considered a spinoff. 

·     The Fast and the Furious

·     2 Fast 2 Furious (this is grammatically suspect)

·     The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

·     Fast & Furious (faster without the extra words)

·     Fast Five (even faster)

·     Fast & Furious 6 (right to the point)

·     Furious 7 (just plain furious)

·     The Fate of the Furious (where have they been?)

·     Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

·     Fast & Furious 9 (to be released in 2020)

Question 2: Samoa is more than 2500 miles south of Hawaii in the middle of the South Pacific. It is almost 10,000 miles from the center of the film’s action in London. Interestingly, Hawaii was used as the set for the “Samoa” location, and Johnson’s mother is Samoan.

Question 3: I enrolled in a little known Badass program at the University of Illinois in 1973. At 6 foot 1 and 190 pounds, I was too small to succeed. I lacked the necessary tattoos, had an aversion to pain, and was generally unmotivated when it was suggested that I work out for eight hours per day, ride a motorcycle, cut all the sleeves off of my t-shirts and learn martial arts. I faired poorly in the classes, “Leveraging your rage,” “Screaming at people who are trying to help you,” and “Taking punches and crashing through windows.” I am unaware of other colleges with this offering.

Question 4: Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson got involved in the fifth film, a turning point for the floundering franchise. This is where Fast and Furious departed from a street racing theme, focusing on heist action involving cars. Gun fights and brawls became central, with only one car chase.

Question 5: Paul Walker, star of the first film, tragically and ironically died in a car crash in 2013, halfway through the filming of Fast and Furious 6. His scenes were completed with some rewrites and his brothers serving as stand-ins. His character was then retired.

This brings us to the movie at hand. The relationship previously established between Johnson (Hobbs) and co-star Jason Statham (Shaw), steeped in badassity and fighting that defies numerous laws of physics, works well if you like laughing during action films. The two are recruited in the US and England by CIA agents played respectively by Ryan Reynolds and Rob Delaney (Catastrophe). Reynolds, though uncredited, is a highlight, employing his snarky Deadpool humor to great effect.

In a more Mission Impossible approach than is typical for this franchise, the reluctant heroes (refusing to work with each other) are enlisted to retrieve a humanity-ending virus from the arm of Shaw’s sister, an MI6 agent framed for the murder of her team. This requires the assistance of a dorky scientist who invented and lost control of the virus, intending it to be used for vaccinations (see, vaccinations ARE bad). Enter Idris Elba as Brixton, a genetically and technologically enhanced “Black Superman” who takes orders from an unseen digitally masked and sinister voice. This voice is last heard at the end of the film, teeing up a sequel along with Ryan Reynolds’ frantic call to Hobbs for help.

An effective drinking game could be played based either on the frequent plot-supporting shouting directives out noisy vehicle windows between Hobbs and Shaw (they never say, “What?”) or each time a vehicle is going to accelerate, when the camera shifts to a close-up of Shaw’s foot hitting the accelerator. It seems Hobbs never drives and the Director never tires of this shot.

There is plentiful use of drones that are capable of far more than is realistic, software activated guns that can be hacked, and head’s up displays with analytics built into Brixton’s bioengineered eyes. These topics are newsworthy but no longer really the stuff of science fiction.

Helen Mirren makes several appearances, all in prison, as Shaw’s mother. She seems to have home schooled Shaw and his sister in espionage protocols and battle tactics that the kiddies gave code names like “The Mick Jagger” and “The Keith Moon.” I bet the tricks still work…wink, wink.

Several troubling relationships are worked out in the heat of battle: Hobbs and Shaw, Shaw and his sister, Hobbs and his brother, that all contribute to the unnecessary length of the movie. One particularly cringe-worthy scene has Hobbs kissed by Shaw’s sister. He then asks if they can do it again the next day after they save the world. Chuckle, chuckle, omg.

If you like action films, this one delivers a ton of chases, fights and shooting. Brixton’s interactions with his self-driving, morphing motorcycle are nicely animated, though it seems they repurposed old sound effects from a Jedi Starfighter.

Early in the movie, Shaw drives a McLaren 720S, with a sticker price of around $300,000 It is a joy to behold. I would be nervous parking this car. He uses it in chase scenes and drives it under a truck and out the other side.

In the end, the world is saved, the good guys win, and the bad guys lose for now. Sadly, the hapless female is strapped to a digital 30 minute countdown timer most recently parodied in M&M commercials, and although she does her share of ass kicking, inevitably she is saved by the big strong men. Oh, and a countdown timer? Fortunately that cliché didn’t lead down the path of “red wire or blue?”

The eventual trip to Samoa takes place without even a wardrobe change. This would be a grueling all-day series of flights. An earlier plane sequence served as an opportunity to introduce Kevin Hart as an Air Marshall and eager wannabe assistant to the perpetually bickering Hobbs and Shaw. His usual comic flair is welcome relief in a scene that otherwise should have been cut.

Despite the annoying, ceaseless bickering that defines the Hobbs and Shaw relationship, the two stars work well together. But the next time The Rock pulls a chain with a helicopter on the end of it, like some big green metallic balloon, I’m going to write him a strongly worded letter. From a distance.

Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw (2019) runs 2 hours, 17 minutes and is rated PG-13.

Should I see this movie?  

Vix Flix Movie Review: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Prior to seeing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I braced myself for a Quentin Tarantino bloodbath on the order of Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill or Django Unchained. Instead, what I initially experienced was a fun romp through a 1960s Hollywood period piece, a buddy movie complete with tons of great original TV clips and music. I wondered if Tarantino was trying something new. And then, following a trail of bloody breadcrumbs, it took a dark turn down a dead end street called Cielo Drive and straight into the horrific Charles Manson murders of August 8, 1969. Oh yeah, spoiler alert, but knowing this won’t ruin the movie. 

Actually, knowing what I just told you, especially if you’re not a Baby Boomer, will help you research and prepare to understand what’s going on while Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio struggle with their diminishing roles in the movie business of the late ‘60s. Leo plays Rick Dalton, a fading TV tough guy trying to transition into movies, alongside his faithful stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). It’s hard to identify the star of this film since the two actors trade the lead role throughout the film and perform with equal humor and intensity.

Tarantino is clearly drawn to the most notorious human monsters in history, but it wasn’t entirely clear where this film was headed for the first hour or so. Tarantino teased out some hints of the story’s through-line early on, but eventually it is revealed that Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring live next door to Dalton. An exclusive area of Benedict Canyon, north of Beverly Hills, this is a very bad neighborhood to live in during August of 1969.

It seems that while everyone else was focusing on the 50^thanniversary of the Apollo Moon landing in July, Tarantino was preparing for the release of this 50^thanniversary alternate reality comedy/drama. Yes, dark comedy of the absurd brand that Tarantino can muster under the most grotesque of situations. Think about Andy Kaufman’s twisted humor. Tarantino likes to psychologically mess with his audience while delivering his own fantasy of how he’d prefer things to turn out – much like Nazis getting their come-uppance in Inglourious Basterds. And here again, that fantasy includes the most menacing of weapons – the flamethrower.

Born in 1963, little Quentin Tarantino either spent every moment of his first ten years in front of a TV and has encyclopedic recall, or he thoroughly researched the era and managed to dig up media assets that tug at the heartstrings of people about ten years older. I enjoyed scenes from Mannix, The Green Hornet, The FBI, and music very specific to the year 1969 and before, including Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Vanilla Fudge, Neil Diamond and others. 

A segment at the Playboy Mansion has Cass Elliot partying with Michelle Phillips and there’s talk of Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, who lived in the Polanski house and briefly partied with Manson. Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis), as cool as ever, reminisces about Sharon Tate’s attraction to short men. “I never stood a chance,” he laments.

The portrayal of this frenetic time effectively captures a generation coming of age, embroiled in Vietnam and two years beyond the “Summer of Love.” Hippies are falling out of favor, but remnants are under the spell of “Charlie” at the Spahn Ranch. Tucked away in a back room on the property is George Spahn (Bruce Dern), the 80 year old sex slave/owner. Of course, weaving fictional characters into notorious historic events is a Forrest Gump sort of fun. Time travel with a twist and lots of liberties.

This is a movie within a movie. We get to watch DiCaprio film a series of retakes in a stereotypical western barroom, then go back to his trailer and combust over his inept and embarrassing performance. Meanwhile, Pitt is on Dalton’s roof fixing a TV antenna and hoping for a part onscreen with Bruce Lee, whom he mockingly calls Kato. The resulting “knock down” fight exposes Lee as a fraud of sorts, a human hyperbole and Karate sound effects master whose “registered weapon-hands” prevent him from engaging in any actual fighting. And the exchange loses Booth his recently acquired job. Lee’s daughter has objected to this portrayal.

A number of scenes in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood are filmed using shallow focus, which, being a Tarantino film, leaves the viewer feeling as if something strange or shocking is about to arrive from off screen or deep within the field of vision. And that’s where this film leaves you sitting on the edge of your seat – for a long time. Those abrupt intrusions simply aren’t delivered.

Al Pacino makes an appearance as Producer Marvin Schwarzs, counseling Dalton on how to remedy his declining star power. He comments on his love for “All the shooting. I love that stuff, you know, the killing.” It’s a nod to his Scarface machine gun “little friend” that in 1969 is still 14 years in the future. This scene takes place at the legendary Musso & Frank Grill, a restaurant frequented by celebrities and the location of one of the best meals of my life. Angela Lansbury was at the next table while my family dined. It was the Summer of Love. I was 12 and had no knowledge of that event or who she was, but my mother was quite excited. It was like driving past Woodstock and wondering where the music was coming from.

Sharon Tate might have been better played by a young Bo Derek, but Margot Robbie nicely captured the essence of the 1960s actress whose tragically shortened career credits ranged from The Beverly Hillbillies to Valley of the Dolls. Actual scenes with Dean Martin from 1968’s The Wrecking Crew are shown as Tate sits in a Westwood theater watching her own performance and enjoying the audience reaction a mere six months before her death.

The film ends after the closing credits with a faux commercial for Red Apple cigarettes, with Rick Dalton praising the merits of the choice smoke that made its debut in Pulp Fiction. There’s lots of smoking throughout the movie.

We talked about this movie for a while the following day and agreed we might like to see it again after some research. Looking for threads that were woven early in the fabric of the seemingly chaotic script would be a fun challenge.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) runs 2 hours 41 minutes and is rated R.

Should I see this movie?

Vic’s Flix Movie Review: Crawl

“Aaaah.”

“Nuhhh.”

“Gguh.”

“Ernnn.”

If you can hear above the sound of your own groans, these are among the distracting litany of sounds the star of Crawl can be heard making repeatedly throughout the endless alligator attacks in this fairly short, action-packed movie.

I credit the Director, Alexandre Aja (Pirahna 3D, The Hills Have Eyes), with some jump-out-of-your-seat scares along the way, much like the scene in which the shark in Jaws prompts Roy Scheider to utter the famous line, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat!”

Heading into this film, I thought it was about one crazy alligator. But no, it’s about an entire swarm of them! They’re all huge and intent on killing humans trapped in a decrepit house somewhere along the Southwest Gulf Coast of Florida, in a fictional town where a hurricane is about to burst a levee. There’s one problem. I’m only aware of one levee in the entirety of this region. All the rest are on the east coast or elsewhere. Minor detail.

Early in the film, a billboard along a highway packed with evacuees advertises “Alligator Farm.” Perhaps this is where the gators lived prior to escape. They seem pissed, and before long they’ve eaten two police officers and three locals trying to loot a store. There’s a lot of red water in each case.

So, a category 5 hurricane is bearing down on our heroine Haley (Kaya Scodelario) and her dad (Barry Pepper), who is familiar mostly from parts in Saving Private Ryan and Flags of our Fathers. He’s trying to save his daughter and not doing a very good job of it. In a mere ninety minutes he manages to have his arm bitten off, drown (Haley saves her dad with mouth-to-mouth and a couple of hard chest blows) and he is probably the source of the movie’s name, since a hideous compound fractured leg causes him to crawl at all times. Here we have a case study in the number of tourniquets that one person can self-administer and still survive.

            “Named him after a man of the cloth…called him Amos Moses. Left arm gone clean up to the elbow…”I apologize, but Jerry Reed’s concept song from 1970 got stuck in my head about half way through the movie.

Kaya Scodelario got her acting start in three seasons of the reality TV series Skins, a show that hired teens with no acting experience. She later landed a part in Moon with Sam Rockwell, and has been building her resume with a trilogy of Maze films that sound suspiciously like Hunger Games in a variant of that post-apocalyptic genre. (Author’s note: I’ve never seen any of them.) In Crawl, she spends most of the movie wet and swimming through disgusting water. She is chomped on several times, once on the leg, once on the arm, and a third time in a death roll alligators are so notoriously fond of. Each instance would finish off a normal mortal. But Haley is a competitive swimmer with a relentlessly pushy father/coach who motivates her by suggesting she’s an alpha predator. A couple of corny exchanges ensue between father and daughter as they make amends while nicely animated alligators (actual alpha predators) are resting for their next scene.

In fairness, I must mention that I live along the Southwest Gulf Coast of Florida. It was kind of fun when US 75 was mentioned, since we take that highway most places. And having been through Hurricane Irma in 2017, I can say that the portrayal of hurricane conditions is pretty realistic, right down to the tree branch that comes crashing through a kitchen window. It doesn’t matter that I’m telling you this. It’ll still make you jump. And our stars being trapped in a basement full of other yucky stuff adds a creep factor in itself. One other point – houses in Florida generally don’t have basements.

We are also quite well acquainted with alligators down here. They frequent the canal behind our house, and during mating season they get a little weird, wandering down the middle of a street where I ride my bicycle. You get used to them.

But the reality is that gators are essentially afraid of humans. They are terrible chewers, preferring to attack small, bite-sized prey. So the scaly crew in this film is seriously demented. And that’s what makes this movie scary. They are survivors from a prehistoric age populated with monsters that eat living creatures. So our species has a genetic memory of these things always having been present. Good casting!

In summary, Crawl is scary, gory and pretty effective overall. But it is also a ludicrous survival story, periodically corny and loaded with distractingly dramatic music and less than stellar acting. Trust me, you won’t want to go swimming in Florida after you see this film, but I’d be more concerned about the shark problem in New Smyrna Beach.

Crawl (2019) runs one hour 27 minutes and is rated R.

Should I see this movie?  

Vic’s Flix Movie Review: Stuber

I’m going to say that this is the funniest movie I’ve seen since 2018’s unexpectedly hilarious Game Night, and then I’ll think about that some more and circle back. 

Perhaps the woman in front of us at the ticket counter set the mood before the show even began. She simply said, “Two for Stubber please.” Revealing her complete ignorance of the concept and the associated pun was good for a laugh when we got far enough away to avoid being heard.

Previews for Stuber got our attention recently, and we chose to go see it despite mediocre early reviews from Rotten Tomatoes. Ok, so this is not an art film, but I suspect ratings will improve as more people see it. Fearful that all of the funniest scenes had been thrown at the trailer, expectations were not high, and the movie is short at just over an hour and a half. In a clever move, several very funny trailer sequences landed on the cutting room floor. They were no longer a factor. Could they fill the other eighty-five minutes with equally good bits?

Well, they did, and I believe we’re going to be seeing lots more from both Dave Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani. It’s not like they both haven’t been extremely busy with lengthy portfolios of TV and film work. But they have now costarred in a cop/buddy comedy with tons of antagonistic chemistry similar to DeNiro and Stiller in Meet The Parents,only ramped way up to another level (or maybe down.) 

For those who haven’t been paying attention, Bautista is one of those insanely muscled professional wrestling stars like The Rock and other brethren in the current generation of Schwarzenegger-type heroes that seem to relish comic roles when not dominating the action/adventure genre. Bautista was barely recognizable as Drax in the two Guardians of the Galaxy films. As that shirtless and heavily tattooed alien he also managed to very competently deliver some extremely funny lines, all the while being much too intimidating a presence to be informed that the jokes were on him.

In Stuber, Bautista is once again the hero and the joke. But in this outing, he is relentlessly and boldly made aware of his failings by Stu, the meek and soft-spoken Uber driver played by Kumail Nanjiani. whose recent voiceover of “Pawny” in Men In Black International pretty much stole the show. And here we have him in human form wanting nothing more than to receive a 5-star rating while playing mellow 70s songs like “I’m not in Love” by 10CC on his vintage iPod. It’s going to be a challenge with his latest Uber passenger, Vic Manning, an aggressive cop partially blinded by recent Lasik surgery.

The plot, villains and outcome don’t really matter in hindsight. It’s the journey, the Uber ride and the outrageous bantering that carry the film. There are a couple of tangents to the Uber through-line involving Stu’s love interest and Vic’s daughter that provide the potential for redemptive sub-plots, but the evolution of Stu from hapless hostage to willing hero is the real five star ride here. There are lessons for Vic as well, but I won’t give those away.

Karen Gillan (Dr. Who, Jumanji) makes a brief appearance in Stuber. She has now worked alongside Dwayne Johnson and Dave Bautista. Is a pattern emerging?

Electric cars take a not so subtle hit when, (predictably) at the moment they most need it to perform, the battery quits and demands recharging. This is a primary fear of potential EV buyers, a sign of our times, and an effective plot device that we will hopefully someday look back upon, laugh and say, “remember that?”

And in a nicely handled race commentary, Stu candidly comments that being taken captive by Vic wouldn’t look great, “A white cop holding a brown guy against his will.”

Vic responds, “I’m not white.”

Stu begins to guess, “Black? Mexican? Jamaican, Columbian, Chinese, no not Chinese.”

We never find out what racial mix produced Vic Manning, but in Stu’s angry estimation, “It was all the ugliest people from all the races that got together and made you.” Only he says it more crudely.

So, getting back to the funniest recent films, I looked them up. There were some cute and funny movies in the past year, but Stuber has better comic writing, superbly delivered, especially by Kamail Nanjiani. And it was a pretty good action movie too.

There is lots of graphic violence, profanity and brief graphic nudity. Not for the kiddies.

Stuber (2019) runs one hour, 33 minutes and is rated R.

Should I see this movie? 

Vic’s Flix Movie Review: Midsommar

I’m going to keep this review short. I feel that the two and a half hours I spent watching the movie shouldn’t lead to more time wasted. And I plan to spoil the entire movie here, so if you think you may want to waste YOUR time, stop reading.

Full disclosure: I am part Swedish. I even said Skol (skål) at the conclusion of the father-of-the-bride’s toast for my daughter’s wedding. So I was a bit excited to see a movie set in Sweden. About what, I wasn’t sure, but I love surprises.

Surprise! This movie sucks. And that was after a fairly promising start. The opening scene presents us with the view of a serene forest in winter overlaid with the sound of Kulning, or melodic Swedish yodeling. Cut to a telephone ringing, and the rest gets really weird.

The main characters, Dani and her boyfriend of four years, Christian are on the verge of breaking up, only she doesn’t realize it. Still, she confides to a friend that she’s afraid she may be driving him away with her neediness and anxiety. Shortly after Christian is counseled by his friends to end the relationship, Dani’s bipolar sister kills herself and her parents with an elaborate auto exhaust pipeline from the family’s garage to their upstairs bedrooms. Christian is now powerless to leave the devastated Dani. So instead, he takes her on a trip to Sweden with his buddies to visit his friend’s communal “family” during a nine-day summer festival. It turns out to be the first major festival in ninety years. Uh oh.

Their arrival in Sweden got me thinking of the 1973 movie The Wicker Man, also filled with pagan ritual sacrifice in a foreign locale. We immediately realize that this is not “family” – it’s a commune, a cult, and they have some bizarre ideas about the cycle of life (after four eighteen year cycles, you jump off a cliff) that include kidnapping strangers to maintain the diversity of their DNA. Of course, they periodically engage in deliberate incest to produce special “open” beings to generate books of cryptic symbols interpreted by the elders for posterity.

Drugs play an important role in the ongoing shenanigans. And the lack of cell phone service prevents any of the visitors from calling for help. So, one by one, the guests begin to disappear while Dani gets recruited for a dance contest around a Maypole of sorts. She is crowned May Queen, drugged and forced to select the ninth in a group of human sacrifices from either a randomly selected member of the commune or her own boyfriend. Well, she just witnessed a drugged Christian impregnating an eager young maiden in a barn, surrounded by a variety of naked, chanting townswomen. So, bye bye, Christian. But seriously, being burned alive inside a gutted bear seems a bit harsh.

There is no happy ending, no rescue, escape or even redemption here. The final image is of Dani, in a full body flower costume, grinning vacantly, having either become transformed into a willing cult member or perhaps having lost her mind. Who cares at this point? Groans were audible from the audience as we all crawled out of the theater during the closing credits.

Ari Aster directed Midsommar. His only other feature film credit is 2018’s Hereditary, another recent movie I warned friends not to see. I generally like films that have newcomers and unknowns. There were lots of very authentic sounding Swedish names in the cast list for this movie. The only recognizable face was that of William Jackson Harper, who we know as “Chidi” in the TV series The Good Place. The cinematography was lovely and the actors all did fine jobs, but the story was pointless and grotesque. As a thriller, it generated some ongoing suspense, but not to the level of horror. The graphic violence was all so matter-of-fact as to be a perverse medical documentary.

Sadly, human beings have engaged in some horrific rituals and practices through the ages, but I really don’t care to witness them. Knowing they exist is bad enough.

Midsommar (2019) runs 2 hours, 27 minutes and is rated R.

Should I see this movie?  

Vic’s Flix Movie Review: Yesterday

We’ve been looking forward to this movie since first seeing the trailer several months ago. The premise is enticing and creative. Unfortunately, previews now give so much away there’s always the risk of seeing a film and then feeling as if the trailer would have sufficed.

While there’s an element of that at play here, I can say that enough surprises, twists and tangential plot lines are carefully woven in along the way to make this a thoroughly enjoyable ride. And then there’s the music. If you don’t like the Beatles, don’t read further, don’t see the movie, and please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know that about you.

Out of respect for my daughter (the ultimate Beatles fan), I will not spoil or reveal much at all about the content of Yesterday. Also for the sake of the twenty or so people who may read this review.

I have written about the Beatles before:
http://viclarson.blogspot.com/2017/09/i-should-have-known-better.html

The band’s impact on popular music and our culture are dreamlike, and Yesterday does a good job of recreating that evolution from the inside out, through the eyes and experiences of Jack Malik, played by Himesh Patel. There was no need to explain how Malik, upon being struck by a bus during a mysterious twelve second global power outage, became the only person on Earth to remember the Beatles. As a failing musician, his struggle becomes choosing to reconstruct and play the band’s extensive portfolio of hits as his own. Or not.

And I will say that I feared before viewing the film that it would be revealed at the end of the story that it all happened in a dream or a coma. That would not only be disappointingly lame, but incredibly weak screenwriting. They did much better.

Ultimately this becomes a love story. Jack’s manager and long time friend Ellie (Lily James) have become so mired in their respective “columns” through the years that there seems no way to cross boundaries. Complicate this with Jack’s sudden fame and departure from their tiny English seaside town and we have a second through-line that periodically intersects Jack’s journey.

Ed Sheeran plays a significant role as himself throughout the film. This lends a current musical sounding board to the script along with observations like, why would a modern musician write a song about the USSR? And who the heck is “Jude?”

 Danny Boyle (127 Hours and Slumdog Millionaire) is the director of this charming, feel good movie.

The casting of Kate McKinnon as a predatory L.A. manager was a distraction. Just about anyone could have played this role. Her association with Saturday Night Live pulled me out of the film and into a lengthy comic sketch. Other than that, she did a fine job with the part.

If you want to see this movie, go quickly, before someone tells you “just one thing” that you’ll otherwise receive as a gift on your own. And in case you find yourself wondering, the surviving Beatles have embraced and approve of the film.

Yesterday runs 1 hour, 56 minutes and is rated PG13.

Should I see this movie?  

Vic’s Flix Movie Review: Shaft

“You see this cat Shaft is a bad mother (Shut your mouth!)”

We all remember that iconic line from the Oscar winning Theme From Shaft by Isaac Hayes in 1971. And it is repeated in the latest Shaft movie, with less polite editing. Whether you like the original Shaft movie or character, the song is unique, powerful and playful. It evokes imagery of the time, Afro-style.

If you’re looking for polite, this film is quite the opposite. It is loaded from curb to gutter with N-words, F-words, M-words, C-words, B-words and whatever other letter-word you can imagine. Even John Shaft’s Millennial son John Shaft Junior is offended, and asks his dad to stop using the N-word.

Junior also apologizes for Dad’s behavior, “He thinks he’s the black James Bond.” Dad responds, “If that dude was real, he’d wanna be me.”

What is it about Samuel L. Jackson that’s so fun to watch? He’s become a virtual parody of himself. His badass self. You expect him to be foul, fierce and forgiveable, and he always delivers.

But wait, you say, Richard Roundtree played Shaft in the original movie. Did he get too old to reprise the role in 2019? Heck no, he’s just Grandpa Shaft now at age 76, a dapper, fine looking fellow who keeps an arsenal in a secret closet in his apartment. Interesting, since Jackson is 70, but a young 70 who can pull off the generational divide.

The story is fairly ludicrous, and is thus considered an action crime comedy. You know those bad guys who can’t seem to hit the broad side of a barn – in the barn? They unload hundreds of rounds to Shafts single clip, and he decimates entire gangs. You realize you just need to duck when a machine gun is being unloaded into your car? Shaft knows. Right on! Oh, and Junior can shoot, he just hates guns.

So John Shaft Junior (Jessie T. Usher) seeks his Dad’s help solving the murder of his best friend. This leads into a world of alleged Muslim terrorists, drug dealers and dance clubs. Yes, to Dad’s surprise, Junior knows the art of Brazilian dance-fighting. That gets him out of one scrape, and then he throws up on two hookers. Dad just roles his eyes and continues to mentor him in the ways of street violence and sex. After all, he thinks Junior’s mama raised him to be a white boy. He’ll have none of that.

Tim Story is in the Director’s chair for this, the 5th film in the Shaft series. About the only credit attributed to him that I recognize is Fantastic Four in 2005. Other than that, he’s done mostly TV work.

By the end of the movie, the three generations of Shaft men are seen striding through the streets of Harlem in matching shades and burgundy suede dusters, ready for the sixth film in the series.

I need to say at this point, do not bring your kids to this movie. Recently I saw two parents taking their perhaps 6 and 8 year old daughters to see John Wick III. Come on people!

Shaft (2019) runs 1 hour and 51 minutes and is rated R.

Should I see this movie? 

Vic’s Flix Movie Review: Men In Black International

So, what’s different about Men In Black International from its predecessors and why doesn’t it work? A number of things, actually. The MIB franchise, parts I, II and III were all directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. They all starred Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. And rather than produce Men In Black IV, faced with declining box office revenue, even when adjusted for increasing ticket prices, they chose to stop while they were ahead. So is this a reboot or simply a fourth chapter?

Calling this film Men In Black IV would have been a disservice to the original triad, which struggled even with the on screen charisma of Smith and Jones to maintain audience interest and compelling stories. Granted, Liam Neeson has a very particular set of skills, as we now understand, but as the head of the London MIB organization, “Agent High T” lacks resolve and caves under pressure from his subordinates. And there’s a reason for that, as we discover later.

There’s some cool tech in this outing. Weapons that are magically extracted from the trim of a flying BMW and a proprietary super-fast subway system transports agents under the ocean to London by way of the Thames (which would actually be the long way around) in…well, they don’t actually say how long, but it’s fast. There are lots of floating displays and holographic projections that have become so ubiquitous in science fiction films that it seems like we should be using them in the real world by now. And of course, the infamous “neuralizer” is used frequently to cover tracks with induced memory lapses and planted suggestions throughout the movie.

Chris Hemsworth, looking lean and unlike Thor in a suit and tie, plays Agent H, reluctantly alongside partner Agent M (Tessa Thompson), a newbie who talked her way into the MIB organization after succeeding in a lifelong quest to find their headquarters. Oh, and she’s a girl! So, we have a couple of obligatory nods to feminine power that come off as patronizing. “I had that conversation,” quips Chief Agent O, the steely Emma Thomson, about the team’s “Men” moniker. And Agent H credits his partner by stating, “We’re the Men…and woman…In Black.” Wink, wink, meet you for a drink later babe. “Who is that guy?” M asks a colorful female, time-shifting alien. “I don’t know but he’s yummy!”

He may be yummy, but he’s no Thor. He’s kind of lost his mojo on the team, but in a fun nod to the Thor character, and as an Easter egg for Marvel fans, he desperately reaches for a one pound sledgehammer during a fight, skidding along the floor as if it might jump into his grasp, but alas, has to pick it up like a mere mortal and toss it ineffectively at a battling alien.

The star of this film is a non-human animated chess piece named “Pawny.” He’s got Baby Groot cuteness and most of the funny lines in the film. I’d pay to see a Baby Masters of the Universe starring these two animated characters. And ultimately Pawny literally saves the world, which goes pretty much unnoticed by the insecure human agents. He is voiced by Kumail Nanjiani, with a subtle Indian accent that makes him sound vaguely like a young computer help desk specialist or Uber driver (which he actually plays in the upcoming Stuber.)

The film seems to lose its footing, heading off on a tangent to an evil ex girlfriend of Agent H named Riza (Rebecca Ferguson.) The most interesting thing about her is a third arm, which she uses to great effect in a fight scene with Agent M. But she really doesn’t seem all that evil, and is defeated far too easily.

Aliens abound in Men In Black International. This has always been a hallmark of the franchise. But minus Tommy Lee Jones’ deadpan demeanor and Will Smith’s naïve enthusiasm, the chemistry of the first three films was entirely lacking. F. Gary Gray, a director with a meager film repertoire and mostly music videos in his portfolio, is a puzzling choice to take the lead on this film. Box office take during its first weekend was respectable but not impressive. It remains to be seen how long it stays in theaters.

Kids might like this, but after spending $20 on tickets and an equivalent amount on snacks, I would have appreciated being shot with a neuralizer on the way out of the theater.

Men In Black International runs 1 hour, 54 minutes and is rated PG-13

Should I see this movie? 

Vic’s Flix Movie Review: Rocketman

On October 12, 1986 we saw Elton John at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, a mere five miles from the legendary Troubadour music venue where he exploded onto the scene on August 25, 1970. By this time, his greatest hits, those from his classic period between 1970 and 1976 were all part of the set list. It’s one of those shows you pull out of your portfolio when comparing concerts with friends. Yeah, I saw Elton John in L.A.

And that said, I don’t consider myself a huge fan, although the song Rocketman is one of my all time favorites. I think we have a greatest hits cassette somewhere, but the Elton John I experienced when I was coming of age in the early 70s was as an inescapable, integral fabric in the soundtrack tapestry that soothed our journey from the late 60s into a fabulous and turbulent decade. 

His songs evoke that “where were you when you first heard…” visceral reaction. He was always on the radio (remember radio?) with a range of tunes that spanned from the beautiful Your Song to the raucous Crocodile Rock. Pick your mood, he and lyricist Bernie Taupin captured raw emotion in music and words. I was washing windows at my first job when the haunting, synthesized strains embedded in the song Rocketman, like fuel expending on ascent, sealed an association within me of flashback proportions. That the song was inspired by the amazing science fiction writer Ray Bradbury of suburban Waukegan Illinois, for me lays another piece of rebar in the concrete of this musical creation. It also harkens back to David Bowie’s Space Oddity, another of my favorites. 

But this is not a music review, so now lets talk about the film that attempts to capture this amazing life and talent.

Like so many other rock ‘n roll biopics, most recently Bohemian Rhapsody, Elton John’s life seems to have followed a script: child prodigy struggles for acceptance and recognition, spends time supporting other musicians, bursts onto the scene, is taken advantage of by producers and adoring fans, copes with drugs and alcohol, and if not dead by 27 from drugs or AIDS, winds up in rehab hoping for a second act.

The movie Rocketman dutifully captures each of these phases, playing alongside a through-line of parental disdain, neglect and emotional abuse. Perhaps the phases in John’s life are segmented in this way, but you can almost hear the pages of the storyboard turning – ok, now the Troubadour segment – like a series of music videos, at times awkwardly strung together.

A youthful 29-year-old Taron Egerton, known from the Kingsmen films, plays Elton John (born Reginald Dwight) as an adult throughout most of the film. His John pales by comparison to Rami Malek’s Freddy Mercury. Other sequences rely on child actors (Matthew Illesley and Kit Connor) to portray his formative, restrictive upbringing as a musical prodigy. Bryce Howard is very un-Jurassic World in her portrayal of his cold-hearted mother. Given John’s full participation in the film, with a nothing-is-off-limits carte blanche to director Dexter Fletcher, the severity of interactions with his parents was apparently represented with full approval. It leaves you feeling very sorry for him, despite his phenomenal transformation and success.

Probably the most powerful sequence in the film, an awe-inspiring debut performance at the Troubadour, is enhanced to fantasy proportions by having John literally float away from his piano, the audience defying gravity and likewise floating upward from the floor of the small club. Those in attendance have bragging rights over a legendary moment in pop music history. In the audience sat Neil Diamond, Stephen Stills and Leon Russell.

When I saw this in the preview I came to expect a more fantasy-like treatment throughout the film. A couple of other fantasy sequences were injected during songs that needed visual embellishment. And how do you tell the story of Elton John without a Grease-like story through song? But the songs were retrofitted to fit the story elements, not originally inspired by them. 

To say that the film was more ordinary than fantastic is unfair. But when a biographical film is more mundane than its subject, it leaves you wondering if it could have been better made in someone else’s hands. In fact, Dexter Fletcher was called in to finish Bohemian Rhapsody when its director was fired for bad behavior. The two films have a similar feel.

Interviews with the cast reveal the general feeling that John is a very nice man. You get this sense in the film as well. He can’t even yell at Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) without immediately apologizing.

During the summer of 1976, the song Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, a duet with Kiki Dee seemed to be played every 30 minutes on top-40 radio. Dee is faithfully played here by Rachel Muldoon, complete with auburn bangs and jumper straight out of the music video. It was an enjoyable scene that was sadly cut short by the entrance of John’s lover/nemesis John Reid (Richard Madden), who came to dominate and control John during his most productive period. So, add him to the list of people you come to hate while learning about Elton.

I always thought (and so did many others) that Bernie Taupin was Elton’s partner. The film straightens that out. They were like brothers, and this is repeated several times. But they were the Lennon and McCartney of early 70s pop music, a partnership so effective they became a single entity.

Like other true-life films with living subjects, a few photos and credits at the end reveal a happy ending. Elton has been sober for 28 years and is married to David Furnish. He has stopped touring to focus on raising their two adopted children.

Rocketman (2019) runs 2 hours 1 minute and is rated R.

Should I see this movie? 

Vic’s Flix Movie Review: Ma

We all enter the crucible of terror known as high school and emerge after four years ready for adulthood. Correct that. We emerge ready for another four years that change us forever. But some never recover from the trauma suffered between ages 13 and 17. Some are kind and some are cruel. And cruelty plays a significant role in the film Ma.

Octavia Spencer is one of those actresses you just want to hug. Thus, she is perfectly cast as Sue Ann (nicknamed Ma), the cuddly adult willing to buy booze for a car full of partying teens. Or the hostess who offers her home as a safe place to drink, “to keep you off the road” she pleads. Who would suspect she’s a psychopath?

Spencer is an academy award winner we all remember from The Help and Hidden Figures. But she has had an extremely busy career, frequently playing nurses on TV and in film. She turns the mood from laughter to horror on a dime in Ma, manipulating the impressionable teen victims she befriends outside a liquor store.

And then it quickly gets creepy.

This is a tale of a deeply traumatized young girl seeking revenge on those who abused her decades earlier. Now, the classmates who bullied her have teens of their own. And did they learn anything along the way? Seems not. So they are ripe for revenge, and temptation is being fostered at every turn. Just DO NOT go upstairs!

From the onset, you find yourself glad to have survived this period of your life, glad that your own kids made it through, and worried about the grandkids’ turn if you are so blessed.

The stomach churning tension experienced during the recent film Greta ( reviewed previously) or Get Out, build analogously toward the evening that Carrie went to the prom, complete with flames and destruction. Unfortunately they skip the “Carrie effect” once the psychopathic main character has gotten her come-uppance. It somewhat disappointingly ends there, minus the nerve jangling, jolting reappearance of the monster who most certainly was destroyed a few moments earlier.

Diana Silvers, whose short career is off to a great start, plays Maggie, the new girl in town whose random act of kindness plays a pivotal role late in the film. Other than that, no bad deed goes unpunished in Ma, and Ma is doing all the punishing.

Director Tate Taylor, who also directed The Help, has directed three actresses to Oscar nominations. He frequently casts Octavia Spencer in his films.

Oral sex, violence and language earn this film its R rating. Its not one for the kiddies, unless you care to do a lot of explaining.

Ma runs 1 hour 39 minutes and is rated R

Should I see this movie?